Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Nicolas Bedos, Rialto Distribution.
If you had the opportunity to experience the most poignant moment in your life again, wouldn’t you want to take it up? That’s the intricate idea in this smart French romance that sees Victor (Daniel Auteuil), who is disillusioned with life and marriage, getting a chance to go back in time.
Victor, a once-famous children’s book illustrator and graphic novelist, is disillusioned with his life and with his dormant t marriage to psychotherapist Marianne (Fanny Ardant). She is having an affair with François (Denis Podalydès), the newspaper editor who fired Victor from his job as a cartoonist.
Feeling depressed, Victor has fallen on hard times, but a possible saviour arrives in the name of Antoine (Guillaume Canet), who makes a good living devising immersive theatrical experiences.
Antoine has created a service to have a group of actors re-enact any given period within a carefully selected décor, similar to a film set. Victor chooses to travel back in time to relive a specific moment in his life, when he was in his 20s: the first time he met the love of his life in a café in Lyons, on May 16, 1974.
Playing the part of Victor’s great love Margot is Doria Tillier. Victor chooses reality over fantasy, a moment from his own life, remembering what occurred. The interactive experience in La Belle Époque enables Victor to relive his memories.
He escapes the present, hankering to go back to when he was 25. This is where Bedos’ film is forceful and most moving, because it traverses the unfathomable passage of time.
The movie plunges its audience into nostalgia of an imagined 1970s.
Winner of 3 César Awards, La Belle Époque will open in cinemas nationally on
13 August, with Victoria to follow late post-lockdown.
