The sophomore feature from French actor-turned-director Nicolas Bedos, LA BELLE ÉPOQUE is resplendent with nostalgic luster, and its leitmotif is ridden with the clichéd gender divide, a sixty-something man laments his disintegrating marriage (which is lopsidedly imputed to his gorgon -like wife for 40 years) and rekindles a romantic tingling with an actress half of his age, who is hired to play the younger version of his wife in a “time-travel” re-enactment.
The central invention is a company shepherded by Antoine (Canet), which caters to its patronage to re-enact tailor-made erstwhile events with plenum diligence, an opening gambit shows a colonial and racist past being violently rectified at gunpoint of several masked terrorists, but our protagonist Victor Drumond (Auteuil) doesn't want to go back that far, or that extreme, he chooses May 16, 1974, the day he first meets his future wife Marianne (Ardant), in a bar called La Belle Époque, to relive that moment of affectionate throbbing.
Antoine, the punctilious and uncouth orchestrator behind the scene, recreates everything in replica from Victor's description (aided by the latter's hand-drawing paintings, for he is a bande dessinée artist passé), and hires his love-hate ex-girlfriend Margot (Tillier ) to play Margot in 1974. Victor becomes increasingly intoxicated by Margot, and ponies up to extend his lingering in the past (basically it is cost 10,000 euro per day), while Antoine is also narcissistically fascinated by his own top-notch recreation, he also perceive the tangible attraction between Victor and Margot, as the latter is prone to improvise and counter his directives, one night, they even sneak out and spend the night in Margot's apartment, they share a kiss but the boundary of whether Victor is kissing an imagined,A younger version of Marianne or Margot the actress becomes growingly blurry.
Parrying the green-eyed monster is not in Antoine's element, and he pulls the plug to retrieve Margot from Victor's fantasy world by inventing a closure between them, in the meantime, Marianne, after kicking Victor out of their household and shackles up with their common friend François (a stertorous Podalydès cannot catch a lucky break), realizes that her new chapter of life might not as rosy as she imagines, after all, a relationship lasts for four decades must contain some tender ballasts, and when she enters Victor's vintage set as herself , their tête-à-tête reaches a reverberation that coyly avoids emphatic commitment, and Victor's last glimpse of an imagined Margot might unfortunately belie Bedos, the filmmaker's Freudian slip, but in this day and age, an old man's nympholepsy is resolutely démodé.
Bedos gloatingly plays with cinema's own intrinsic artificiality (an actor plays a role and simultaneously denies being an actor), fabricating a mise en abyme with a tacit knowingness, Victor knows everything is staged, everyone involved is playacting, but between virtual reality and past reality , he would rather stay with the latter (while Marianne is clearly embracing the former). But the rub is, this conceit is facilely characterized by Bedos' limited imagination, a cinematic production is a concerted, labored, time-consuming activity, but Antoine's fastidiously pre-designed set appears to be so cavalierly arranged, as if within a 24-hour preparation, one could get everything but the kitchen sink as long as enough dough is shelled out.That abiding feeling of overreaching itself in its flights of indulgence that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.
Performance-wise, Auteuil has become more at ease with minimal gesticulation and Canet cannot sweep us off our feet with Antoine's lousy persona, so it is up to the two ladies to comport themselves with a well-rounded emotional backbone, Tillier is mesmerizing as Margot , underpins her spirited, incisive mien as she must contend to telegraph the high-wire discrepancy between whether she is playing Marianne or expressing herself; whereas Ardant, always a class act, though gets the shaft to play a two-timing wife, her Marianne is never a monstrous entity, in lieu, her side of confusion, frustration and trepidation is finely pinpointed by Ardant's accurate effusion, albeit the film fails to prioritize her side of the story, a César award is the icing on her cake, the film itself is a major César contender (11 nominations with 3 wins),but that might be a bit too generous, and too self-congratulatory on the feel-good factor of one's inward-looking recollections.
referential entries: Bedos' MR AND MRS ADELMAN (2017, 7.5/10); Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano's C'EST LA VIE! (2017, 7.4/10); Woody Allen's MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (2010, 6.4/10).
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