Cinema Releases - My Golden Days
Mathieu Amalric reprises the role of Paul Dédalus from Arnaud Desplechin’s My Sex Life…Or How I Got into an Argument in MY GOLDEN DAYS, the character’s origin story.
Paul, now an anthropologist, prepares to leave Tajikistan and reflects on his life. He has a series of flashbacks that unfold in three episodes (newcomer Quentin Dolmaire portrays Paul as an adolescent).
The first includes his childhood in Roubaix, then he remembers his trip to the USSR, where a clandestine mission led him to offer up his own identity to a young Russian, whom he considers a phantom twin for the remainder of his life.
He remembers himself at nineteen in Roubaix, his sister Delphine, his cousin Bob, the parties with Pénélope, Mehdi and Kovalki, the friend who was to betray him. He remembers University life in Paris most of all, he remembers Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet), a beautiful, rude, haughty soul and the love of his life.
Quinzaine des réalisateurs, Cannes 2015
Week Commencing 16th March 2018
Cine Lumiere | 17 Queensberry Pl | London, SW7 2DT | 020 7871 3515 | 16,17,18,22 Mar |
Showroom | 15 Paternoster Row | Sheffield, S1 2BX | 0114 275 7727 | all week |
Week Commencing 23rd March |
||||
Ciné Lumière | 17 Queensberry Pl | London, SW7 2DT | 020 7871 3515 |
Mar24,25,26,29 Mar |
Week Commencing 30th March 2018
Cine Lumiere | 17 Queensberry Pl | London, SW7 2DT | 020 7871 3515 | 1st, 2nd April |
ICA Cinema | The Mall | London SW1Y 5AH | 020 7930 3647 | 31 Mar, 4 April |
Glasgow Film Theatre | 12 Rose St | Glasgow G3 6RB | 0141 332 6535 | 30 Mar - 2 April |
Week Commencing 6th April |
||||
Home | 2 Tony Wilson Place | Manchester M15 4FN | 0161 200 1500 |
all week |
Errol Flynn | Derngate |
Northampton NN1 1TU |
01604 624811 |
6 & 11 April |
New Park Cinema |
New Park Rd |
Chichester PO19 7XY |
01243 786650 |
6, 10, 12 April |
Week Commencing 13th April |
||||
Eden Court | Bishops Rd | Inverness IV3 5SA | 01463 234234 | 18, 19 April |
Week Commencing 27th April |
||||
Robert Burns Centre | Mill Rd | Dumfries DG2 7BE | 01387 264808 | 27, 28 April |
Arnaud Desplechin was born in 1960 in Roubaix. In 1984 he graduated in cinematography from IDHEC in Paris.
He was discovered in 1991 with his medium-length film La Vie des morts. His first feature, The Sentinel, was chosen for the official competition at Cannes in 1997. His next film, My Sex Life (How I Got Into an Argument) revealed a whole new generation of young actors – notably Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Devos. In fact, it’s his rapport with actors that add an extra dimension to Desplechin’s films, with his actors regularly receiving top awards for their work in his movies: two Césars for Best Male Newcomer (Emmanuel Salinger in The Sentinel and Mathieu Amalric in My Sex Life …), César for Best Actor (Mathieu Amalric in Kings and Queen), César for Best Supporting Actor (Jean-Paul Roussillon in A Christmas Tale), and the Cannes Film Festival 61st Anniversary Prize for Catherine Deneuve in A Christmas Tale. Six of Arnaud Desplechin’s films have been in official competition at Cannes.
My Golden Day was presented in Cannes' Quinzaine des réalisateurs in 2015.
1992 LA SENTINELLE
1996 COMMENT JE ME SUIS DISPUTÉ (MA VIE SEXUELLE) (My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument)
2000 ESTHER KAHN
2003 EN JOUANT ‘DANS LA COMPAGNIE DES HOMMES’ (Playing 'In the Company of Men’)
2004 ROIS ET REINE (Kings and Queen)
2007 L’AIMÉE (documentary)
2008 UN CONTE DE NOËL (A Christmas Tale)
2013 JIMMY P: PSYCHOTHERAPY OF A PLAINS INDIAN (Jimmy P. (Psychothérapie d'un indien des plaines)
2014 LA FORÊT (TV FILM)
2015 MY GOLDEN DAYS (Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse)
2017 ISMAEL'S GHOSTS (Les Fantômes d'Ismaël)
CAST |
|
Paul Dédalus |
Quentin DOLMAIRE |
Esther |
Lou ROY-LECOLLINET |
Paul (adult) |
Mathieu AMALRIC |
Irina |
Dinara DRUKAROVA |
Jeanne Dédalus (the mother) |
Cécile GARCIA FOGEL |
Rose |
Françoise LEBRUN |
Mme Sidorov |
Irina VAVILOVA |
Abel Dédalus (the father) |
Olivier RABOURDIN |
Marc Zylberberg |
Elyot MILSHTEIN |
Kovalki |
Pierre ANDRAU |
Delphine Dédalus |
Lily TAIEB |
Ivan Dédalus |
Raphaël COHEN |
Pénélope |
Clémence LE GALL |
Bob |
Théo FERNANDEZ |
Louise (Bob’s mother) |
Anne BENOIT |
Medhi |
Yassine DOUIGHI |
Professor Béhanzin |
Eve DOE-BRUCE |
Gilberte |
Mélodie RICHARD |
Kovalki (adult) |
Eric RUF |
|
|
CREW |
|
Directed by |
Arnaud DESPLECHIN |
Written by |
Arnaud DESPLECHIN |
Julie PEYR |
|
DP |
Irina LUBTCHANSKY |
Editor |
Laurence BRIAUD |
Original Music |
Grégoire HETZEL |
Production Designer |
Toma BAQUENI |
Costume Designer |
Nathalie RAOUL |
Casting Director |
Alexandre NAZARIAN |
Sound |
Nicolas CANTIN |
Sylvain MALBRANT |
|
Stéphane THIEBAUT |
|
Assistant Directors |
Stéphane TOUITOU |
Marion DEHAENE |
|
Production Manager |
Oury MILSHTEIN |
Production Coordinator |
Tatiana BOUCHAIN |
Producer |
Pascal CAUCHETEUX |
123 mins France 2015 | Scope 5.1 |
Certificate 15 |
★★★★★
'This sublime teen romance evokes the heady passions that come from choosing between love and learning…wonderful..
This is a tremendous film from Desplechin, all the more so due to the fact that he never once looks like he’s trying, or forcing, or declaiming, or contriving, or reinventing. Memory is presented as a form of natural magic, and the question of reliability is moot because the character of Paul has been sculpted as to be coldly rational and free of self-consciousness, yet totally trustworthy. Let’s wait and see, but this could very well emerge as the director’s masterpiece.'David Jenkins, Little White Lies
★★★★
'Arnaud Desplechin is the Proust of modern French cinema...My Golden Days is an associative stream tumbling over rocks...it stands up, even towers."
Nigel Andrews, The Financial Times
'My Golden Days feels highly distinctive…The film elegiacally depicts the late 1980s as a period of change and endings, and takes that decade as a frame for the lamenting of lost youth and lost love that has been a French literary trope at least since Flaubert and Proust…The young cast are superbly directed and very affecting…My Golden Days helps to pinpoint just what makes (Desplechin’s) best work so touching.'
Jonathan Romney, Sight & Sound
'My Golden Days is beautiful in its thoughtful complexity: a richly woven texture of emotion, affection, human foibles, anxieties, contradictions and passions.'
Catherine Sedgwick, The Upcoming
★★★★
'A mesmerisung tale of heartbreak...The film is an undeniable pleasure, with a wicked sense of humour and real heart.'
Owen Richards, The Arts Desk
'Arnaud Desplechin is such a distinctive storyteller: intriguing, perplexing, seductively indirect…It is about the unbearably sweet and unchangeable nature of remembered youth, speckled with literary references to Yeats, Proust and Homer…Desplechin’s film-making language is always fluent and rich.'
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
★★★★
'My Golden Days is very much a tale of how everyone is the sum of their experiences. The thrilling memory of an overwhelming passion, the sting of betrayal, the joy of being young and alive in a world full of possibilities have all left their mark on a Paul who is now older, wiser and more rueful than we have seen him before. Desplechin allows the search for lost times to unfold with a light touch, a vivid sense of Paris in the 1980s and 1990s, and a cast who bring freshness and vitality to the most familiar ingredients of a first great love.'
Allan Hunter, The List
'Terrific'
'This transcendent film..'
Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
'This bold, brilliant movie from Arnaud Desplechin... brims over with humour, heartbreak and ravishing romance...He crafts My Golden Days as if he'd never made a movie before, as if youthful emotions were spilling all over it. The result is an exhilarating gift.'
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
'This is a tremendous film from Desplechin, all the more so due to the fact that he never once looks like he’s trying, or forcing, or declaiming, or contriving, or reinventing...Let’s wait and see, but this could very well emerge as the director’s masterpiece, so consummate is its dewy-eyed vision of love as our prime conduit into the past. It’s a film which could happily spiral on into infinity, and you kinda wish it would…'
David Jenkins, Little White Lies
'Arnaud Desplechin's Cannes sensation contains an intoxicatingly realistic portrayal of the intense emotionality, the intertwined joy and pain, of first love...These young actors, guided by the veteran Desplechin, are so effective in their roles that we feel we are watching them live out a lifetime's worth of emotions right in front of our eyes. Film has always been especially effective it portraying what it can feel like, what it can mean to be in love, and "My Golden Days" is right up there with the best of them.'
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times'The general impression of My Golden Days is of infectious warmth. The bracing recollections of youthful political action; the fond memories of idle afternoons spent on carpets reading and listening to records; and the sweet evocations of first love as it grows from chit-chat on the grounds outside school to long strolls the morning after a house party: Desplechin views all of this with a touching, complex nostalgia. There is serious pain in this movie — pain that endures throughout the years — but also a sincere love for life lived, and life remembered.'
Danny King, Village Voice
‘Arnaud Desplechin and Mathieu Amalric revisit the adventures of Paul Dédalus in this marvelously vivid coming-of-age drama. Young leads Quentin Dolmaire and Lou Roy-Lecollinet (both maAnnking a superb screen debut)… ushered along by some of the most fluid, emotionally resonant filmmaking of Desplechin’s career.'
Justin Chang, Variety
★★★★★
'My Golden Days (Trois Souvenirs De Ma Jeunesse) bursts with life by weaving a golden braid of adventure and responsibility.'
Anne-Katrin Titze, Eye for Film
★★★★
'The two leads give stellar debut performances as fledgling lovers pushed and pulled from one another by the imperceptible and impenetrable magnetism of the first great romance of a lifetime'
Matt Anderson, CineVue
'French Master Arnaud Desplechin's My Golden Days is a shimmering coming-of-age-tale...'
Stephanie Zacharek, TimeDownload photo set
Download High Res Quad Poster
Trailer on Vimeo - can be downloaded
Trailer on Youtube
Variety Interview with Arnaud Desplechin
IndieWire interview with Arnaud Desplechin
Film Comment Interview with Arnaud Desplechin
Criterion interview with Arnaud Desplechin
Cannes Pressbook
Clip from the film