Film Review
In his latest film, critically acclaimed director Arnaud Desplechin
takes a Proustian trip down memory lane as he weaves a compassionate
prequel to his 1996 film
Comment je me suis disputé... (ma
vie sexuelle). Now well into middle-age and successful
in his chosen career, Desplechin's alter ego Paul Dédalus (named
after the central character in James Joyce's
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
is seen suffering from a crisis of identity. This, helped by a
nasty brush with French officialdom (a less tasty madeleine than the
one that figures in Proust's seven volume novel but just as effective),
brings on a sudden bout of soul searching in which Dédalus
relives past experiences so that he can make sense of his life and work
out who exactly he is.
Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse has all the qualities that have
earned Desplechin his high standing (as rigorous in its writing and
acting as on the technical front), but there is also a more pronounced
human dimension, a warmth and tenderness that have so far been fairly
lacking from much of his work. His most engaging film to date,
this beautifully composed nostalgia trip matches the maturity of its
mise-en-scène and script with a genuinely heartfelt account of
first love and is sure to reaffirm Desplechin's reputation as one of
France's most gifted auteur filmmakers.
In the film's more sombre framing sequences, Desplechin regular Mathieu
Amalric reprises the role that helped to set him on the road to stardom
in the mid-1990s, whilst his younger self is played by exciting
newcomer Quentin Dolmaire in what is assuredly another star-making
role. Dolmaire has to age from 16 to 21 in the course of the
film, and does so remarkably convincingly, looking eerily like a
younger Amalric as he does so. The actor's intoxicating charm,
coupled with his obvious ability, makes him the focus of Desplechin's
sprawling film and is someone we can readily identify with, bringing humour,
depth and a subtle poignancy to his character's painful sentimental
education across five traumatic years. Desplechin is just as
fortunate in the actress he chose to play the younger version of
Emmanuelle Devos (Amalric's lover in
Comment
je me suis disputé) - Lou Roy-Lecollinet, who is every
bit as true-to-life, enchanting and sensual as Devos (even matching her
indefinable mystique) in her first screen role.
As its title suggests,
Trois
souvenirs de ma jeunesse comprises three episodes in the
formative years of its central character (whom we can safely assume is
Desplechin himself). Spanning a fair chunk of the 1980s and
1990s, the flashback narrative ranges from Roubaix to Minsk (not long
before the fall of Communism) to Paris and shows Paul Dédalus
gradually acquiring an adult identity through a mix of escapades that
range from the all-too-familiar to the downright improbable.
After a brief foray into childhood that plays like a Grimm's fairytale,
the film takes us by surprise by becoming a parody of a Cold War
thriller in which our hero has a stab at being a secret agent behind
the Iron Curtain and ends up giving up his identity to a complete
stranger. The handing over his passport is a crucial moment in
the film, symbolising Paul's loss of identity which continues to haunt
him throughout his adult life and ultimately prompts the remembrance of
things past
à la Proust.
The bulk of the film is concerned with the third recollection depicting
Paul's nascent love affair with Esther, who is not just his first love
but also the woman who apparently had the greatest impact on his
life. Paul and Esther's budding relationship - made dazzlingly
vivid by the raw authenticity of Dolmaire and Roy-Lecollinet's
performances - is hampered by separations imposed on them by the brutal
realities that accompany their process of maturation. They say
that absence makes the heart grow fonder, well Desplechin proves this
old adage by reminding us how the heartache of young love was once
pleasantly aggravated by enforced separation in those halcyon
days before mobile phones and the internet came along and cruelly
rendered the hand-written love letter, so essential to a fledgling
romance, completely obsolete. Today's digitally minded, endlessly
texting Romeos and Juliets don't know what they're missing.
Hashtag whatever.
Eschewing the more formalised, clinically intellectual approach of his
previous films for a warmer, sunnier, more sentimental style of
cinematic expression, Desplechin crafts a coming-of-age drama that is
both deeply personal and intensely engaging. His is an
unashamedly rose-tinted view of adolescence in which he himself
indulges in playful nostalgia by borrowing Francois Truffaut's use of
the iris effect and having actors talking to camera in a way that is so
quaintly Nouvelle Vague. Somewhere between
À la recherche du temps perdu
and
Baisers volés,
Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse is a
haunting evocation of youth and the dreams of youth that brims with a
kind of sweet but piercing romanticism that is virtually non-existent
in cinema these days. Through his central character's search for
his lost identity Desplechin appears to be mourning the decline of
cinema towards a soulless form of entertainment that is lacking not
only in identity but also a capacity to feel and make us feel.
When the present no longer moves us and the future leaves us cold,
where else can we go but the past?
© James Travers 2015
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Next Arnaud Desplechin film:
Les Fantômes d'Ismaël (2017)
Film Synopsis
On his return to France after spending several years in Tajikistan,
forty-something anthropologist Paul Dédalus is prompted to looks
back on his past. He recalls his childhood in Roubaix, his
mother's fits of madness, the brother Ivan he was once so close to and
the father who became an inconsolable widower. He remembers
undertaking the long journey to the Soviet Union, where a secret
mission led him to give up his passport to a young Russian man so that
he could escape to the West. It was whilst studying in Paris that
Paul met Dr Behanzin and acquired his lifelong fascination for the
science of anthropology. And then there was Esther, the girl who
stole his heart and became central to his existence...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.