Returning to France after a decade of study and travel in central Asia, anthropologist Paul (Mathieu Amalric) reflects on his adolescence, including his strained relationship with his mother and father; a tense trip to the Soviet Union to help Jews forbidden from emigrating; and, most importantly, his volatile relationship with the beautiful Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet, a ravishing discovery and instant star). A combination prequel and sequel to mid-'90s art-house favorite My Sex Life—though it can easily stand alone—My Golden Days is a literary, luminous, and clearly personal coming-of-age drama by Arnaud Desplechin, the best French director of his generation and chief spiritual heir to François Truffaut. Warmly nostalgic without lapsing into overt sentimentality, fluidly cut, and adorned with a characteristic variety of stylistic flourishes (iris shots, lovers' notes presented as to-the-camera soliloquies), this film expertly conveys the formative impact of the past on our perception of the present, as well as the way an experience can involuntarily revive and shine new light on a memory. But any underlying Proustian theme is slyly delivered via old-fashioned cinematic pleasure: sex, clouds of cigarette smoke, acerbic wit, and teenage rebellion.

A