Taglines: If you were given the chance to live one day in your life, which day would you choose?
La Belle Époque Movie Storyline. 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.
La Belle Époque is a 2019 French romantic comedy-drama film that was written and directed by Nicolas Bedos. The film stars Daniel Auteuil as Victor, a man in his 60s whose long marriage to Marianne (Fanny Ardant) is on the rocks. When Victor meets Antoine (Guillaume Canet), the owner of a company which allows people to perform a version of “time travel” by visiting a stage where the company acts out a staged historical reenactment, he takes the opportunity to revisit the moment when he first met Marianne, in hopes of rekindling his love for her. The film premiered out of competition at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
La Belle Époque (2020)
Directed by: Nicolas Bedos
Starring: Daniel Auteuil, Guillaume Canet, Doria Tillier, Fanny Ardant, Pierre Arditi, Lizzie Brocheré, Bertrand Poncet, Thomas Scimeca, Christiane Millet, Cédric Zimmerlin
Screenplay by: Nicolas Bedos
Production Design by: Stéphane Rozenbaum
Cinematography by: Nicolas Bolduc
Film Editing by: Anny Danché, Stéphane Garnier, Florent Vassault
Costume Design by: Emmanuelle Youchnovski
Music by: Nicolas Bedos, Anne-Sophie Versnaeyen
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: 101 Studios
Release Date: October 2, 2020
Views: 80
