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‘La Belle Époque’ (translated from French as “the beautiful epoch” or “the good times”) is a period in European history, dated approximately from 1871 to 1941, and typically characterised by its renewed sense of peace, wealth and optimism. It is also the neon-lit title of a café in Lyon, where, on 17 May 1974, a young man called Victor (Daniel Auteuil) first encountered the woman he would one day marry, Marianne (Fanny Ardent).
All of this is learned in the present day, where the stagnating marriage is finally concluded, and Victor – no longer quite so handsome, possessing only “grey or black clothes” – is kicked out of the apartment by his wife. After receiving a gift from his son and the director of a theatrics service, Antoine (Guillaume Canet), who can promise a kind of playhouse ‘time travel’ (wherein “tailor-made, historical events” are meticulously restaged), Victor decides to pay and re-experience the moment he first came into contact with Marianne. If anything, as a final salutation to what has since been lost. “Nostalgia has become big business” Antoine impresses, though Victor is yet to fully understand the implications of his subscription.
In a landscape reminiscent of the fake ‘Seahaven’ in The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998), Victor is swept into the rapturous, pseudo-realism of the day he first met Marianne, in 1974 – an atmosphere finely tuned, yet sometimes imperfect, to exactly replicate the details of the event. (“It was ‘big slut’, not ‘bitch,’” he corrects one actor; the alcohol thrown across the table must be “red wine”). On the other side of two-way mirrors, Antoine and his crew monitor the grand design as it unfolds: dimming or raising a light on cue, adding “music” where appropriate, or prompting a performance with the help of an earpiece. Marianne’s on-stage imitation, the dazzling Margot (Doria Tillier) is also undergoing a separation from Antoine, and, by her commitment to the role, unknowingly inspires a new love in each of the men. Inside this blossoming, hothouse environment, emotions are rapidly stoked, each metanarrative coinciding with and complicating the other.
Nicolas Bedos writes and directs La Belle Époque (his second endeavour behind the camera) with entertaining and brilliant gusto, frenetic energy that lends itself to the make-believe past. Seriousness is balanced with levity in many instances, scenes toppling from graveness (Marianne confessing her unhappiness) to scatological farce (drinking vodka whilst sat on the toilet; Victor standing patiently nearby). It is an abrasive style of comedy, unremitting and often unapologetic. Elements of David Fincher’s 1997 mystery-thriller, The Game, are married to the kind of narrative blueprints we might anticipate from Charlie Kauffman (the scripts of Being John Malkovich or Synecdoche, New York). Confidence exudes from every performance, notably in the violent duet of Antoine and Margot, which, ultimately, makes for quick and pleasurable viewing.
“It’s fake, but enjoyable all the same,” the imitation of Marianne comments, leading Victor between memories, intoxications, and recollections: “I’d forgotten about you!” His trip down memory lane (if we can even label it a ‘memory’) is one that pleads for the rekindling of his marriage – the essence of which has been lost to bitterness and dissatisfaction – and to place exactly where it all went wrong. Their lives, however, cannot be mapped so easily. The café, ‘La belle époque’, outside of time and reality, is shuttered into a comfortable refuge for Victor to replay the romance of before; though how many times can the feeling be experienced?
La Belle Époque is a deft and hilarious romance, one highly imaginative in its reach. It is playing at the IFI French Film Festival on November 17, followed by a general release on November 22.
