La Belle Époque (film)

La Belle Époque is a 2019 French romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Nicolas Bedos.[1]

La Belle Époque
Theatrical release poster
Directed byNicolas Bedos
Produced by
  • François Kraus
  • Denis Pineau-Valencienne
Written byNicolas Bedos
Starring
Music by
  • Nicolas Bedos
  • Anne-Sophie Versnaeyen
CinematographyNicolas Bolduc
Edited byAnny Danché
Production
companies
Distributed byPathé Distribution
Release date
  • 20 May 2019 (2019-05-20) (Cannes)
  • 6 November 2019 (2019-11-06) (France)
Running time
115 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench

The film stars Daniel Auteuil as Victor, a man in his 60s whose long marriage to Marianne (Fanny Ardant) is on the rocks. When Victor meets Antoine (Guillaume Canet), the owner of a company which allows people to perform a version of "time travel" by visiting a stage where the company acts out a staged historical reenactment, he takes the opportunity to revisit the moment when he first met Marianne, in hopes of rekindling his love for her.

The film premiered out of competition at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.[2]

Plot

Former designer, Victor is in his sixties and disillusioned. His marriage to Marianne is in trouble and he is disinterested and overwhelmed by the modern technological world. To cheer him up, his son Maxime bought him an evening organized by a company the stages reenactments as a form of "time travel". This company offers its customers to relive the era of their choice, by mixing theatrical devices and historical reconstruction. Some wealthy clients choose to spend an evening with William Faulkner, Adolf Hitler, or with aristocrats in the 17th century century. Victor reluctantly accepts when Marianne shows him the door. He chooses to revisit the most significant week of his life, the one where he met great love, forty years earlier, May 16, 1974, in the La Belle Époque café in Lyon. In this "staging", Marianne is embodied by Margot, an actress who lives a complicated and tumultuous relationship with Antoine. The latter, a former screenwriter, is very fastidious and does not support any approximation on the part of his collaborators. Little by little, Victor will lend himself to the game, until he gets lost in these "reconstituted" memories.

Cast

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 87% based on reviews from 15 critics, with an average rating of 7.7/10.[3] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[4]

Peter Debruge of Variety wrote: "Where so many high-concept romantic comedies squander their one big idea, "La Belle Époque" leverages its own to remind how and why we fall in love in the first place..." and Debruge praise the writing, saying it has "a script that's as ambitiously imagined as a Charlie Kaufman movie."[5] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review calling it a "witty, sexy and original romantic comedy that touches many points of satisfaction."[6]

References
  1. Allan Hunter, "'La Belle Epoque': Cannes Review". Screen Daily, 21 May 2019.
  2. "Cannes festival 2019: full list of films". The Guardian. 23 April 2019. Retrieved 30 April 2019.
  3. "La Belle Époque (2020)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  4. "La Belle Époque Reviews". Metacritic. CBS. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  5. Debruge, Peter (3 June 2019). "Film Review: 'La Belle Époque'". Variety.
  6. Todd McCarthy (22 May 2019). "'La Belle Epoque': Film Review | Cannes 2019". The Hollywood Reporter.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.