My Golden Days (Arnaud Desplechin, 2015): France

Reviewed by Ashley Wierl. Viewed at the AFI Fest 2015.

Directed by the five time nomination reciever for the palm d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival- Arnaud Desplechin, “My Golden Days”  is a sort of coming of age film that reminices on the life of Paul Dédalus (Mathieu Amalric, Quentin Dolmaire) from his childhood, teenage years, and his current adult life. The film is a branch off of one of Desplechin’s prior films “My Sex Life… Or How I Got Into An Argument”.

While the film starts with the adult Paul Dédalus (Mathieu Amalric) being detained in airport security because of a discrepancy over his identity and travel history. With this premise, the film flashes back to Paul’s childhood with his crazy mother, to his rebellious adventure in the USSR, and maybe most importantly adolescent Paul’s (Quentin Dolmaire) time spent with his first love, Ester (Lou Roy-Lecolline). Throughout family qualms and the heartache accompanied by a fist love, Paul journeys through self discovery while reflecting on what parts of his past still impact him today.

A majority of the party scenes in the film have loud American hip hop music playing, but as for the rest of the film it is a gentle score by Grégoire Hetzel. This music is fitting for the passionate and heartbreaking scenes between Paul and Ester.