Arnaud Desplechin first introduced his protagonists, the young Paul Dédalus and his girlfriend Esther, way back in 1996 in his highly successful "My Sex Life... or How I Got into an Argument." Now he brings Dedalus (Mathieu Amalric) back again as an adult, just having returned from his work as an anthropologist in Tajikistan. The film is divided into three segments, with an adult Paul reminiscing first about his childhood, chronicling an abusive father and depressed mother, who eventually commits suicide. There's not much to the first segment but the second proves to be the most interesting. After being detained by government security forces, Paul explains why another Paul Dedalus, with origins in Russia, has turned up with his passport.Paul is subjected to an interrogation by a security agent which allows him to explain how he gave up his passport while on a high school trip to Russia so that a Jewish teenager could use it to escape to Israel during the time of anti-Semitic persecutions of Jews in the Soviet Union during the late 80s.But My Golden Days turns from being a suspense thriller to a more conventional coming of age story when the young college student Paul (played convincingly by Quentin Dolmaire), falls for Esther, a high school student who is the same age as Paul's sister, Delphine.After having seen the film a few weeks ago, I had trouble recalling details about Paul and Esther's romance-- so I turned to a few critic's reviews to refresh my memory. Short on plot description, some reviews are content to provide a few amorphous descriptions of the nature of the relationship.Kenneth Turan, writing in the L.A. Times, briefly explains, "We see them playing out the drama of attraction and insecurity, inexorably drawn to each other but having to face the problems different personalities invariably bring to relationships."Peter Travers in Rolling Stone feels there's something quite deep about what happens between Paul and Esther: "Memory gives the movie a formal frame, but Desplechin laces the past with such raw emotion that nothing is hemmed in. Love hurts, that's for sure. And Desplechin makes sure we feel it."Stephanie Zacharek writing in Time Magazine provides a few more details about Paul and Esther's burgeoning romance: "It takes a long time, in this eternal nighttime, for Paul and Esther to connect. Their flirtations are stilted at first, especially since Paul feels threatened by her many suitors, and she doesn't need to lie about their numbers: Young men cluster to her, as Marlene Dietrich sang, like moths around a flame. But ultimately, it's Paul she chooses, and their liaison starts out sweet before wending its way into l'amour fou territory."Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat writing in Spirituality & Practice believe Desplechin is on to something in what they see as a nuanced portrait of the protagonist's motives: "He reveals the delights and the dangers in our idealization of the beloved, our dizzying capacities of infatuation, the primal longings for each other, and the pain and pleasure which this state of romantic arousal engenders. The Brussats perhaps provide the best summary of the third segment. They note that Paul puts Esther on a "pedestal" but still leaves her behind when he goes to Paris for school. There is a sub-plot emphasizing Paul's competence in his chosen field when he convinces a noted anthropology professor to accept him as a student.Later Paul and Esther share intimacies through a series of love letters but their separation leads to the deterioration of their relationship. As the Brussats put it, Esther "begins to fall apart emotionally and he is at a loss for what to do in response." Finally Paul seeks solace with an older woman and never seems to get over Esther's decision to go out with his best friend, Kovalki, with whom Paul meets up at film's end, and is unable to contain his anger towards. Ultimately Desplechin's portrait of a failed adolescent relationship suffers from a lack of gravitas or high stakes. I would contrast this film with Bergman's "Summer With Monika," where a femme fatale destroys the relationship an earnest young man develops with a young woman who is not what she initially appears to be.Esther, on the other hand, is simply a spoiled neurotic and Paul's inability to shed all the misplaced anger from such an earlier time in his development marks Desplechin's narrative as decidedly inconsequential despite all his "innovative" split-screens and entertaining 80s soundtrack.Francophiles will undoubtedly dig all the "passion," but this dyed-in-the-wool American views this more as a generic tale of adolescent loves lost.

Starting with a sequence, if I removed it would not happen anything, since it would not interfere anything in the film, for my taste, it stays with the part of the history of this personage less interests me. The film is a simple love story of two kids.I do not like the character of the Lou Roy-Lecollinet or, rather, its evolution. I do not understand why she draws her so submissive and dependent. Of course, she does it very well. He is also very well.The grief of the film is that there comes a time when I do not know if you are telling me a story cinematically or you are telling me with voice-over and actors looking at camera. Personally I like to see what happens on the screen, not that a voice tells me. I know it's part of the cinema, but I do not like it. Especially when solving situations with a plane that counts nothing and voice-over.The film, to my taste in boredom. More than anything, because I'm not interested in what you're telling me. When I discovered that the film was going to go, I thought I preferred the history of Russia, but sadly this story lasted only a few minutes in front of the love that has become eternal.The photograph is typical of French film, white and without contributing to the story.The address is simple. So much that it does not realize that it bores, at least to some spectators. His plans are observant, do not tell history, do not contribute. Neither are well compounds.I imagine that less and less of cinema, but to me this type of cinema I do not like.

"My Golden Days" (2015 release from France; 123 min.; original title "Trois Souvenirs De Ma Jeunesse" or "Three Memories from My Childhood") brings (further) stories from Paul Dedalus. As the movie opens, we see Paul and his Russian (?) girlfriend lament the fact that Paul is returning to France after 8 years away. It makes him think back to his childhood, and we flash back to Paul as an 11 yr. old boy, fighting with his (mentally deranged) mother. Back to the current day, Paul is being stopped by French officials at the airport for "passport problems". At this point we are 10-15 min. into the movie, but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.Couple of comments: when I wrote earlier that this movie brings the further stories of Paul, it is because writer-director Arnaud Desplechin made a previous film about this character, 1996's "My Sex Life... or How I Got into an Argument", with the role of Paul played by Mathieu Amalric, who reprises the role almost 20 years later. I admit I haven't seen the 1996 film, but that didn't stop me from checking this out, as I think Amalric is one of France's finer actors of this generation (check him also out in the recent "La Chambre Bleue", "The Grand Budapest Hotel", etc.). "My Golden Days" turns out to be a somewhat nostalgic look back to the 'good ol' days'. Of the "three souvenirs" referenced in the original French title, by far the longest amount of time is spent on Pauls' relationship with Esthel during Paul's university days, and set somewhere in the late 1980s. I grew up in nearby Belgium just a few years earlier (doing uni in the early 80s), and I can attest that the director captures the mood of those university years perfectly. It's probably the reason why this movie resonated with me so well, but I also want to emphasize that if you didn't grow up in Europe during those years, you'll still 'get it'. Newcomer Lou Roy-Lecollinet, in her first role on the big screen as Esthel, is simply outstanding, and surely we have not see the last of her. Last but not least, there is a bunch of great music featured in the film, both as to song placements and the original score, the latter courtesy of acclaimed French composer Grégoire Hetzel ("Incendies", "Intrusions"). A quick look around tells me that the score is available on Amazon France."My Golden Days" premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, to general critical acclaim. Not sure why it's take so long to play in US theaters, but this past weekend, the movie opened without any pre-release buzz or advertising at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati, and I know what that usually means (a one week run). The Wednesday evening screening where I saw this at was attended okay but not great. That's a darn shame. Hopefully this is a movie that can find a wider audience when the DVD finally comes out. If you are in the mood for a nostalgic yet effective foreign film that looks at what it was like growing up in France in the 80s, you cannot go wrong with this. "Trois Souvenirs de Ma Jeunesse" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

It is one of the better told love stories I've seen on the screen. It's one of those movies that's about a relationship running it's course from beginning to end. Very similar to movies like 9 Songs and Love 3D, but no where near as sexually graphic. Maybe because the movie is about a now forty five year old Paul reminiscing about when he was nineteen and had an on again off again relationship with sixteen year old, Ester. As the film title suggest, Paul looks back with found (and little obsessive) memories of her.I thought the main characters as well as the supporting cast were people really interesting to look at. though the movie has a nice look to it that adds to the feel, I never fully embraced the period piece this film is, and surprising the Hip hop score did not help one bit.But overall I like it a lot.