Opening Night: My Golden Days
Description
Easily enjoyed without prior experience of the other film, this companion piece to director Arnauld Desplechin’s My Sex Life … or How I Got Into an Argument revisits the character of Paul Dédalus, played by Mathieu Amalric, now living in Tajikistan but preparing to move back to Paris. This return raises formidable specters from his past, excavating memories and moments from critical chapters of his troubled childhood that reverberate through his adulthood, including his first romantic attachment to Esther, a schoolmate of his younger sister. While mostly an emotional and romantic evocation, the film plays fluidly with philosophy, poetry, anthropology and mythology, teasing tensions between East and West, love and life, the past and its ineffable pull on the present. First-timers Quentin Dolmaire and Lou Roy-Lecollinet bring fresh radiance to a coming-of-age tale full of both youthful passion and knowing regret.
Biographies
One of France’s most acclaimed directors, Arnaud Desplechin was born in Roubaix in France and studied film direction and photography. His first film, the medium-length La vie des morts, won the Jean Vigo Short Film Prize in 1991. His films include La Sentinelle, Kings and Queen and A Christmas Tale. Although his original idea for My Golden Years was to make a film about teenagers, Desplechin has said, “For me, returning to Paul and Esther was like going into my attic, and trying to find some old masks and costumes, some props, and to create something new with them.”