'My Golden Days': Desplechin's prequel to 'My Sex Life ...' gets young love right

Yes, My Golden Days is a prequel, but it isn't necessary to know Arnaud Desplechin's My Sex Life . . . or How I Got Into an Argument, now 20 years old (and still great) to grasp what's going on as the director revisits his soul-searching protagonist, Paul Dédalus.

Mathieu Amalric, the busy French actor and filmmaker, is back as Paul, now a successful anthropologist, reflecting (via an amusing interrogation framing device) on pivotal episodes from his life. The original title of Desplechin's new film translates to Three Memories of My Youth, and that's what we get: wonderfully evocative, funny, sad, complex, and essential passages from a man's childhood and adolescence.

Cut to the kid actor (Antoine Bui) playing Paul in the opening section, where he grapples (literally) with his mentally unstable mother. He runs away to live with his great-aunt (Françoise Lebrun), who hands him a sketchbook and a box of pencils and encourages him to draw.

The "Childhood" chapter gives way to "Russia," in which a teenage Paul (the terrific Quentin Dolmaire - the real star of the movie) is off on an adventure in the old Soviet Union, peeling away from his tour-guided classmates to fall into some amateur spy business with his best friend.

But the longest, richest chapter in My Golden Days is "Esther," a stirring account of first love, as Paul meets Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet), a radiant, wide-eyed, cigarette-smoking schoolgirl. He's dazzled by her aloofness and her confidence and, in their first conversation, confesses that he's useless at pickup lines. It is his candor that first charms Esther, who ultimately brushes off her beaux (yes, plural) to be with Paul.

We see the pair as high schoolers and then later - as Paul goes to Paris and she stays in their hometown, Roubaix - as young adults. They write letters. They visit. They argue. They make love. Dolmaire and Roy-Lecollinet, both new to acting, convey the roiling, all-consuming nature of the relationship and the way each changes and grows, their identities shaped in fundamental ways by the other.

My Golden Days feels connected to Francois Truffaut's Antoine Doinel stories, but also to a wide sample of films and filmmakers (the '80s clothes, the American cars, and the beating Paul takes from a gang on the street all echo early Scorsese, playfully). The storytelling is simple, the emotions intense, the way Desplechin dives into a life - into these lives - is a marvel.

srea@phillynews.com
215-854-5629

My Golden Days
Directed by Arnaud Desplechin.
With Quentin Dolmaire, Lou Roy-Lecollinet, and Mathieu Amalric. In French with subtitles. Distributed by Magnolia Pictures.
Running time: 2 hours, 3 mins.
Parent's guide: R (nudity, sex, profanity, adult themes).
Playing at: Ritz Five.