In his new My Golden Days, Desplechin finds this same Paul Dédalus (still Amalric) 20 years later but in characteristic form, quipping “I love organized women” to his latest lover as she helps him prep for his return trip to France. But the bulk of the movie takes place in flashback, imagining the earlier years of the teenage Paul (played by Quentin Dolmaire) and the first stages of his life-altering, round-and-round love affair with Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet). Desplechin’s perspective on this younger Paul is more tender, less critical than it was in My Sex Life: Here, the camera moves not with amped-up restlessness but with slow, concentrated pans and the overall smoothness of a still pond.
My Golden Days still abounds in Desplechin hallmarks: An episode of Cold War–era political rebellion leads to the elder Paul’s being accosted and interrogated by a mysterious official in
Despite these unsettling moments — which include a scary memory of parental violence set in a stairway in the middle of the night — 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