La Belle Époque (film)

An unemployed cartoonist and illustrator, Victor, is in his sixties and disillusioned. His marriage to Marianne is in trouble, and he is disinterested and overwhelmed by the modern world, and what he sees as faddish technological advances. To cheer him up, his son Maxime buys him a voucher to spend an evening run by a company that stages historical reenactments as a form of "time travel". This company offers its customers an opportunity to relive the era of their choice, mixing theatrical devices and historical reconstruction. Some wealthy clients choose to spend an evening with William Faulkner, Adolf Hitler, or with aristocrats in the 17th Century. At first dismissive, after Marianne throws him out of their apartment, Victor reluctantly approaches the company. He chooses to revisit the most significant week of his life, the one where he met great love, forty years earlier, May 16, 1974, in the La Belle Époque café in Lyon. Through re-staging this event, the owner of the company, Antoine, and his turbulent affair with Margot, the actor he casts as Marianne, is introduced. Antoine, a former screenwriter, is very fastidious and overbearing, but holds an appreciation for Victor from a kindness he did for him as a teenager. Little by little, Victor becomes lost in these "reconstituted" memories, Margot and Antoine's relationship breaks down further, and Marianne slowly comes to regret her decision. The characters, in their couples, reconcile over their need to connect to the authentic, over the nostalgic.

• Daniel Auteuil as Victor Drumond
• Guillaume Canet as Antoine
• Doria Tillier as Margot
• Fanny Ardant as Marianne Drumond
• Pierre Arditi as Pierre
• Denis Podalydès as François
• Michaël Cohen as Maxime Drumond[4]
• Jeanne Arènes as Amélie[5][6]
• Bertrand Poncet as Adrien[7][1]
• Bruno Raffaelli as Maurice/Yvon/Hemingway[7]
• Lizzie Brocheré as Gisèle / Margot’s friend[7]
• Thomas Scimeca as Freddy/Hans Axel von Fersen[8]

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 88% based on reviews from 16 critics, with an average rating of 7.7/10.[9] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[10]

Peter Debruge of Variety wrote: "Where so many high-concept romantic comedies squander their one big idea, "La Belle Époque" leverages its own to remind how and why we fall in love in the first place..." and Debruge praise the writing, saying it has "a script that's as ambitiously imagined as a Charlie Kaufman movie."[11] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review calling it a "witty, sexy and original romantic comedy that touches many points of satisfaction."[12]

• La Belle Époque at IMDb