First love is surely regarded as one of the greatest glories in one's life. Sometimes it endures and sometimes it does not, but for many it remains an important marker of maturation. It usually is a privileged place in memory. Liv Ullmann, remembering her early marriage, said "I can never be so young again with anyone else."
My Golden Days is a compelling French film that transports us to our experience of first love and the intense longing, elation, and intensity that accompanied it. Director Arnaud Desplechin (Kings and Queen, A Christmas Tale) is a master mood maker. He reveals the delights and the dangers in our idealization of the beloved, our dizzying capacities of infatuation, the primal longings for each other, and the pain and pleasure which this state of romantic arousal engenders.
Paul Dedalus (Mathieu Amalric) is a middle-aged anthropologist who is returning to France after working abroad. When he is stopped by police and questioned about some irregularities with his passport, we flash back to experiences he had as a young boy and teenager.
As a boy, Paul defends his sister and younger brother from their manic mother (Cecile Garcia Fogel) and afterwards moves in with his lesbian great aunt (Francoise Lebrun). After his mother's suicide, his father (Olivier Rabourdin) falls into a depression and young Paul feels like an orphan.
By the time he is a teenager, Paul (Quentin Dolmaire) has developed a risk-taking personality. He agrees to help out a friend (Elyot Milshtein) on a secret mission to carry documents and cash to Russian Jews in Minsk. His commitment to do this even though he is not Jewish shows his capacity to put his own needs second to the needs of others.
The third portrait of Paul maps his love-at-first-sight of Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet), a seductive and beautiful girl who prefers the company of males over females. Rumors swirl around high school that she is a slut. But none of that matters to Paul who, in the spirit of millions of other young lovers, puts Esther on a pedestal. Still, he leaves her behind when he goes to Paris for school. Proving his daring-do again, he seeks acceptance by a teacher (Eve Doe-Bruce) by giving her an out-of-the-box reason for taking him on as an anthropology student.
For a while Paul and Esther share their deepest emotions, fears, and hopes with one another through a series of love letters. But she begins to fall apart emotionally and he is at a loss for what to do in response. Out of exhaustion and disappointment, Paul begins a sexual affair with Gilberte (Melodie Richard), an older woman who acts as a tutor for him.
The experience of first love can alternate from feelings of ecstasy to a bad case of mental disorientation. Both Paul and Esther suffer from a lack of confidence in regards to the opposite sex, and that takes the ardor and part of the allure out of their developing romantic relationship.
My Golden Days is remarkably creative assessment of the pain and the pleasure of first love.