My Golden Days

2015 ‘Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse’ Directed by Arnaud Desplechin

Paul is preparing to leave Tajikistan, while thinking back on his adolescent years. His childhood, his mother's madness, the parties, the trip to the USSR where he lost his virginity, the friend who betrayed him and the love of his life.

Mathieu Amalric Lou Roy-Lecollinet Quentin Dolmaire Léonard Matton Dinara Drukarova Cécile Garcia-Fogel Françoise Lebrun Irina Vavilova Olivier Rabourdin Elyot Milshtein Pierre Andrau Lily Taïeb Raphaël Cohen Kheifets Gregory Clémence Le Gall Théo Fernandez

Alternative Titles

Tres recuerdos de mi juventud, 3 souvenirs de ma jeunesse, Nos Arcadies, Τα Χρυσά μας Χρόνια, Mine beste dager, My Golden Years

drama

123 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by davidehrlich ★★★★

Desplechin rebounds from his most impenetrable film to make (by far) his most accessible... even though it's ostensibly a prequel to MY SEX LIFE. feels like an Assayas nostalgia trip with a new wave mania, and i mean that in the best possible way. deceptively light, as per usual, too dense to capture everything in one go, as per always.
Review by marcricov ★★★★

Communism, literature, anthropology, art, music and religion tied into an intellectual’s coming-of-age romance? It’s gotta be French film right? Yep, you got it. And boy is it refreshing to see a teen film with some brains.
Think Olivier Assayas’ Something In The Air crossed with The Spectacular Now, and you’d be getting close to what Arnaud Desplechin has on display here.
The thing I really love about Desplechin’s films is that they are always incredibly complex - narratively and thematically; the stories are intricate, the characters are rich and the dialogue is so sharply offbeat to that point that if you lose concentration for one second, you’ll lose sight of what the hell is going on, and I really admire that.
Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★½ 1

I can’t decide whether this is really very good or I’m just reacting to nostalgia, less for the time depicted than to Desplechin own place in 90’s cinema and how his aesthetics reflect both a post nouvelle vague/post cold war generation looking for its on poetical vision (so yes I was around 18 when I saw Comment je me suis dispute and it left a big mark on me). He seems very aware of this effect given that the Russian section seems to be there almost so the film could also suggest La Sentinelle. It should be mention that this is less a plot prequel to Comment (things just don’t add up perfectly) than an aesthetic one, sort of a…
Review by Logan Kenny ★★★★

it seems like 10 but only 2 years have gone by is one of the most perfect descriptions of adolescent melancholy i’ve ever seen. the whole film walks on the line between absurdism and tragedy, the heartbreak of memory and how sometimes you just wish you could go back to the moments where everything was simpler, where you had the whole world in front of you.
Review by RasmusS ★★★

Okay I lied. One more French film.
My Golden Days made me conflicted. It feels familiar and realistic but heightened, stylistic and melodramatic. It’s full of beautiful, sentimental scenes thanks to touching central romance but it also feels false and dishonest. It’s kids playing adults but coming of age, it’s a romance but character study, the highs are very high and lows truly are low, Desplechin doesn’t seem to find balance. However, I was surprised how invested I was because the start wasn't strong and this appeals to a type of audience I feel I'm not part of.
What this essentially is: a tale of two teenagers in love whose relationship is hindered by the prevalent environment, Paul's absence and…
Review by preston ★★★★½

Desplechin tries a hackneyed genre, the coming-of-age reminiscence, and makes it his own. The filmmaking seems to be instinctive - see e.g. the flurry of mismatched angles during Paul and Esther's first meeting, somehow reflecting their surging hormones - the characters ruled by a singular mix of self-awareness (Esther admitting she always has that effect on boys) and fevered OTT impulsiveness; their feelings seem to be too big for them, like middle-aged Paul still erupting - though he surely knows it's stupid, though indeed he doesn't consciously feel anything - at the memory of teenage betrayal. Not sure who decided on the English title but the French one seems better, if only in emphasising the role of all three youthful…
Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★½ 1

62/100
Second viewing, down from 69. (Star rating remains the same, though.) I'd thought some of my reservations might fall away if I watched this without fresh memories of its ostensible predecessor rattling around in my brain, but instead it wound up feeling considerably more diffuse. Desplechin makes a point of having Paul mention his double in the final scene, but the last-second effort at synthesis feels ad hoc—were the first and second sections removed, nobody unaware of the fact would sense their absence. (The brief childhood glimpse does have a function, but given how little we actually see of Paul's mother, I'm not convinced that it fulfills said function. Quite enjoy the trip to Minsk, on the other hand, without understanding why it's in this particular film.) A superlative First Big Romance picture to which unrelated reminiscences cling like barnacles.
Review by Lucca Nardoni ★★★

Ok, I won't write a lot of things on this review, I think I will really enjoy this movie with a 2nd watch, I don't know if I was tired or something but that 2 hour long film felt like 4 hours, the story drags a lot, but I got that was really the point- this movie is a coming of age pretty incredible that show us a life of Paul Dédalus which is a fascinating character.

Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse, is a very incredible story, that show us love, friendship, family, and more love.
A movie that I feel that I will only fully enjoy with a second watch.
I had a lot different emotions throught the entire…
Review by Maude ★★★½

J'ai du mal à m'expliquer la résistance que j'ai rencontrée en visionnant ce film, comme si c'était trop impudique pour que je puisse totalement adhérer à sa beauté. Le film contient de si belles images, cueillies au ras de la vie, telles des fleurs franches toutes éclatantes de jeunesse et de couleur. Or, ces fleurs que maitrise parfaitement tout un art sous-jacent - montage, éclairage, rythme, caméra - peuvent être plombées par des lignes de dialogues qui veulent soit trop jouer au fin-finaud, soit tombent complètement à plat à l'aide des clichés dans lesquels elles s'embourbent. On a quelque chose comme un cinéma très bavard de tradition française qui aurait rencontré un culte plus américain de l'image. Un cinéma qui…
Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★½

69/100
[Originally posted as part of a dispatch from Cannes '15 for The Dissolve. Opening sentence bounces off my preceding thoughts on Carol.]
Arnaud Desplechin’s My Golden Days, on the other hand, recalls a more recent past, just before mainstream adoption of the Internet put an end to long-distance relationships conducted primarily via snail mail. Having heard that the film is both prequel and sequel to Desplechin’s My Sex Life…or How I Got Into An Argument (1996), I made a point of rewatching that three-hour epic during a long layover in Istanbul on my way here. It wasn’t really necessary, though, as Desplechin has written a completely new story involving several of the characters from My Sex Life, not worrying…
Review by Michael Strenski ★★★★½

A film that looks back in so many ways. To youth, to a bygone era, to films that came before it. (There is a lot of Truffaut in here.) Meanwhile, Desplechin remains uniquely capable of tapping into a certain emotional specificity. None of the incidents in this movie ever happened to me and yet I connect with this more than most stories of young fucked-up love.
Review by Enfant du Siècle ★★★

As the original french titles suggests, the film presents 3 moments in the life of our protagonist Paul Dédalus, a quiet but determined young man who grew up in the 1980's. The things is that the first two chapters take about 30 minutes and the rest of the runtime is devoted to, as you would expect, a love story. I would have rathered more balance between the episodes (the second one is particularly interesting), or to see how the first two had a real impact in the last one.
Quentin Dolmaire delivers an adequate performance while Mathieu Amalric is always a treat, even if he has such a small role this time. My only complaint in this department is that,…

Recent reviews

Review by PACHA 100tos ★★★½

Sin llegar al nivel de UN CONTE DE NÖEL, Desplechin logra otra placentera e hipnótica película, que retrata con belleza y buen gusto los lazos afectivos que enlaza a lo largo de su juventud Paul, el atractivo protagonista, interpretado en la adultez por Mathieu Amalric. El título original se refiere a tres recuerdos trascendentales en el pasado de Paul (el segundo recuerdo reúne los mejores momentos del film); pero el acento está puesto en Esther, la chica del barrio de la que se enamora, y con la que vive un apasionado y tormentoso noviazgo. Desplechin nos transporta a los ’80, en Francia, logrando la inmediata empatía con Paul y su entorno. Una historia de vida simpática y emotiva. MUY BUENA
Review by Abhisek Ghosh ★★★★

একটা মিষ্টি আতরের গন্ধ, মেলানকোলিয়া-নাম্নী নদীটির কোলে বসে জলের ওপর শান্ত হাওয়ার আনমনা বয়ে চলা দেখে যাওয়া ... ❤️
Review by wglass ★★★★

The whole thing was just okay but the ending will stick with me. I loved the idea of Paul still being that pissed and holding a grudge for over 20 years. This is also how I’d like to live my life, I never want to get over anything.
Review by Carly ★★★★★

This kickstarted my love for foreign films. The perfect mix of nostalgia and heartache
Review by Jordan Vergel de Dios ★★

Forgettable coming-of-age slight sequel to My Sex Life that kind of tarnishes the backstory of the characters. Kind of wish I didn't see it..
Review by Lucca Nardoni ★★★

Ok, I won't write a lot of things on this review, I think I will really enjoy this movie with a 2nd watch, I don't know if I was tired or something but that 2 hour long film felt like 4 hours, the story drags a lot, but I got that was really the point- this movie is a coming of age pretty incredible that show us a life of Paul Dédalus which is a fascinating character.

Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse, is a very incredible story, that show us love, friendship, family, and more love.
A movie that I feel that I will only fully enjoy with a second watch.
I had a lot different emotions throught the entire…
Review by miranda priestly ★★★★½

Est ce que quelqu’un t’a déjà aimé plus que sa vie?
Moi je veux t’aimer comme ça.

.......this movie had NO right being this poetic!!!!!
Review by Thiago_RM ★★★★

Very moving, entertaining and funny film, about the beauty of falling is love head first with no security net.
Review by Jackson ★★★½

takes that dreamy nostalgic tone of MY SEX LIFE and weaves it directly into the text. instead of twenty-somethings afraid of how their lives might turn out, it’s fifty-somethings finally gaining the clarity to see what happened. desplechin’s direction is more artificial to match this feeling of memory—using intertitles, split-screens, vignetting, and fourth wall breaking moments. a movie to get lost in.
Review by Chris Sweet ★★★

12/22/2020
Review by manthatsucks ★★★

Existential crisis moment
Review by Trevor Williams ★★★★½

A loose continuation of Paul Dedalus’ story, My Golden Days is entirely different in tone and style compared to Desplechin’s earlier film. Amalric is barely in the film, but it still feels very much his story. It feels like the same filmmaker, but this is much more stylized. This is youth bubbling over in the present. The things that happened and shaped us that are still being used to drive and continue in the evolution of adulthood. For all the memories, it’s beauty is in the moments that capture time as it once was for those characters. The past was the present when it happened.