Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

"My Golden Days" came out in 2015 as a late-breaking prequel to Desplechin's mid-90s classic "My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument," which may be the best film since "Lucky Jim" about life on the lower rungs of the academic ladder. Once again, Mathieu Amalric plays Paul Dédalus, now returning to France after a decade or so doing ethnographic fieldwork in the former Soviet Union; a farewell tryst with his gorgeous Russian girlfriend (Dinara Drukarova) unleashes a cascade of memories: In a brief prologue, 10-year-old Paul flees his mentally unstable mother and takes refuge with his great-aunt and her Russian lover. Next, he recounts a daring high-school exploit to an urbane French spook, who wonders why he (and his passport) have doppelgangers in Australia (long story!), and in the longest, most significant episode, he relives an intense love affair with a classmate of his younger sister's, Esther, a clever, soulful, sexy, needy, neurotic young woman (she grows up to be Emmanuelle Devos in "My Sex Life"; here she's played brilliantly by Lou Roy-Lecollinet).Trigger warning: Paul and Esther communicate in improvised love lyrics (as befits two alumni of the Lycée Baudelaire); Esther's pouty histrionics may evoke bittersweet memories of post-adolescent romance, or may just seem too precious to be endured. Your call! This final episode starts to drag a bit as Paul soldiers on as an unfunded grad student in Paris, sleeping in hostels, couch surfing and ménage-à-trois-ing it with a congenial older couple while Esther mopes her way through "a stupid college course" and cheats on him repeatedly. Luckily, Desplechin props up his sometimes rambling storyline with ingenious staging and cinematography: When Paul first approaches Esther, he's surrounded by a windblown swirl of fallen leaves, which is echoed in the final scene as he strides into what looks like a blizzard of torn-out pages from a book (they're both "feuilles" in French, I guess; does it mean that this chapter in his life is coming to an end?); hard to put into words but it's a lovely effect. Finally I should mention the first-rate period soundtrack: The Specials, De La Soul, "Atomic Dog" and Run-D.M.C. It's a remarkable film, though, again, a certain tolerance for post-Truffaut coming-of-age shenanigans is required.

They say its a prequel to the 1996 film 'My Sex Life' that I haven't seen, but this looked good and its not. I'm not sure how much one has to be familiar with the original film, though it does not matter much I think since it is a prequel. Because everything starts here and follows there. So I saw it, and I wanted to like it, but not fully impressed. The story was told in chapters. The opening was like some kind of a spy thriller, but soon when the episode 'Esther' begins, it turned into a romance drama.A man who has been investigated when another person with the same identity was found. So he reveals his school day's events, followed by his first girlfriend and complication surrounding it he had faced. That, how he had won her over the older boys and about his close friend, till leaving them behind to work in the central Asia. Mostly it is a love story with some twists in the affair, but how it all ends still remains mystery even after the narration ended.The issue is it is not detailing anything, just reveals events of a youngster's romance life. Particularly the end was not good. So I think that's why I need to see the first film, resuming the narration could continue from where this one concluded. I leave (_b_l_a_n_k__s_p_a_c_e_) till I saw that and update this review, if I change my stance over this one. Even if I didn't like, still I would update it.Meanwhile back to the review; it is like a French version of 'Flashbacks of a Fool'. Technically, there's no fault in this, only the screenplay did not convince me. The actors were so good, no doubt its a well made film that some people would enjoy it and I hope you are one of those.6/10

One event in which Paul allows a Russian person a forged identity, which essentially is his, to go to Israel brings up old thoughts as he is stopped, decades later, at an airport. Old thoughts of perhaps the only girl consistently in Paul's life who was both mesmerizing and infuriating. Yet over 10 years they broke up and got back together. Cheated on one another with strangers, and in her case with his friends and family, yet though too volatile to stay together, they were too drawn to one another to stay apart. This tale is their slightly twisted love story featuring what often kept Paul away from being where Esther wanted him.CommentaryAmerican romance films are often simple. Girl meets boy, girl usually is there to help the boy become a better person, boy doesn't appreciate it till it is almost too late, then he does a grand gesture for a happy ending. This, to me, is the norm. Making it so when movies like 500 Days of Summer come out, they become cult hits. With French cinema, though, it seems the opposite is done. Happy endings are few and far between and while usually the focus is on the male and him learning and growing still, things are drastically more complicated.You see, despite the French being considered the romantics, there is a line drawn between words of love and acts of passion. The words are what we believe are their culture. Things said which makes you swoon and flutter your eyes like a fool. However, the passion is often anything but romantic. The fights, the betrayals! Oh, there is nothing simple about romance in French films. In this movie, Esther is the girl who supposedly all the girls hate and all the boys either wanna be with or sleep with. She seems so assured of herself to the point of arrogance. A trait Paul quite admires as he approaches her with seemingly no romantic experience. Yet, somehow, he turns this lioness into a sheep. One who needs him desperately to the point it is surprising the only damage she does to herself is sleeping around with people and not drinking and drugging herself into oblivion. But, despite her being open with her transgressions, and he to her, it is weirdly accepted because often there is a distance between them.Their back and forth is often wild and confusing. Especially with her sleeping with those who are his friends and family. Those who should be supporting Paul's relationship with her are the ones taking advantage of his absence. Yet there is so much forgiveness for reasons you can never understand why.Yes, Paul and Esther are cute together, but her clinginess and aversion to being social makes them seem like an odd couple when they are outside seclusion of a bedroom, rooted in a private intimacy. Though perhaps the real odd thing about this film is how this all starts with Paul being stopped at the airport for it is believe his passport is fraudulent and then us going into issues he has had with his parents and this one spy-like mission he did in Russia. To say the least, while this film is primarily focused on Esther and Paul's relationship, it creates so many arguments as to why they could never be that you sometimes wonder what the movie wants you to learn, see, or understand.Review SummaryHighlightsYou have to admire how in French cinema there often doesn't feel like a tried and true way to go. There doesn't seem to be a formula. It is just two people feeling each other out, often clashing, yet melting into one another after their shields are broken, walls were torn down, and there is nothing left but the softness of skin left to protect them.Low PointsPerhaps what bothered me the most about this film is that Esther was never allowed to become more than a love interest. It is noted she went to school, perhaps didn't have the best relationship with people, especially her parents, but she was just a mess with little explanation as to why. The time spent on the Russian story, meeting Paul's siblings, who basically disappear halfway through the film, and then this airport thing, a lot of that time, I felt, could have been dedicated to building up Esther. Though, for what I know, perhaps there is a place for Esther like characters. Women who are but love interest and that's it. Maybe it is just some political correctness planted in my head which leads me to believe both leads deserve equal backgrounds.On The FenceThe tender moments, usually when in a bedroom alone together, are when you can understand Paul and Esther's relationship always being rekindled. There is a softness to her which seemingly is only available when naked. Otherwise, insecurities, arrogance, and an inability to compromise rage in her to the point she seems less like a person and more like someone whose world revolves around Paul. A 2D depiction of someone's ex placed into a script. Which seemed a tad unbelievable considering how cool and independent she was initially shown as. Though, I guess, the argument could be that once the infatuation phase was over we got to see the real Esther.

The main impression I gained about 'My Golden Days' is a bit more care could have been taken in casting the three actors who play the lead character - at least far as looks go. When we first meet him, Paul Dédalus, a French diplomat, is played by Mathieu Amalric, with his distinctive, 'lived-in' face. We then see him as a child played by Antoine Bui - who is facially so similar to Amalric they could be related. But as a young man, Paul is played by the handsome Quentin Dolmaire, who looks nothing like Amalric and Bui. If Bui didn't look so similar to Amalric this aberration wouldn't be so noticeable.But anyway, the story: returning to France after almost a decade abroad, Paul comes to the attention of the intelligence services because someone with the same name and date of birth has been discovered in Australia. As Paul is questioned, we flashback to his childhood living with his lesbian aunt, to an eventful trip to the Soviet Union and to his student life, but most of all we examine his relationship with the captivating Esther, whom he wins over with his pseudo-intellectual gobbledy-gook.Young Paul is that staple of French cinema, the student who spends too much time thinking. Esther is that other overly-used staple, the unhinged woman. This sort-of prequel to director Arnaud Desplechin's 1996 'My Sex Life... or how I got into an Argument' contains nothing that can't be found in hundreds of other French films. But there's good acting all around; Dolmaire and, as Esther, Lou Roy-Collinet are easy on the eye and their cast of supporting characters interesting. If I have any complaint, it's that I would have liked more - or indeed, any - explanation as to why the child Paul disliked his mother so much, and perhaps more screen time for Amalric - he appears several times in-between the flashbacks of the first third of the film, then suddenly disappears for the rest of it; it's quite noticeable. Where did he go?