The second feature by writer / director Nicolas Bedos, following 2017’s Mr & Mrs. Adelman, has been called ‘old school’ by a number of critics, and not only for the cast, which includes such stalwarts of the French industry including Daniel Auteuil (Jean Du Florette / MR73), the ageless Fanny Ardant (Un Amour De Swann / Finally, Sunday!), Pierre Arditi (The Horseman On The Roof / Private Fears In Public Places) and Denis Podalydés (The Officer’s Ward / Summer Things), but also for being an intelligent, smartly put-together comedy / drama dealing with universal themes, ranging from the power of love, the pain of the passage of time, the idea of ‘reality’, the accommodations which need to be made in relationships, and how memory can fool and deceive those who remember), and also credits its’ audience with the ability to deal with the twists and turns without having to be led by the hand.

Perhaps its nearest touchstone is Westworld, the original Michael Crichton film as well as the TV series, as Auteuil’s jaded and increasingly bitter Vincent, finally separated from his far more adventurous wife, Marianne (Ardent), is given an opportunity by his son, Maxime (Michaël Cohen - Them / I’ve Been Waiting So Long), to embark on a day of ‘time travel’, almost like a spa day in the past, to live in a painstakingly curated recreation of some bygone era, or perhaps a cherished memory, provided by a company run by Antoine (Guillaume Canet - Tell No One / Non-Fiction), his son’s best friend. Whereas some go for a particular time in the past, such as a lavish King’s ball in the pre-Revolution era, or sharing a boozy night with Ernest Hemingway (or at least a convincing lookalike) in a Parisian bar, Victor’s choice is far more specific - the 16th of May, 1974, the day he first met Marianne. Thus the rumpled, tired Victor is returned to a night nearly fifty years earlier, in a recreation of his neighbourhood at the time, especially the bistro he used to frequent, and an era where smoking was virtually compulsory, and once again meets ‘Marianne’, actually an actress called Margot (Doria Tillier - Le Jeu / Yves), who is in turn Antoine’s on/off girlfriend.

Although looking at the past and what has been left behind, Vincent’s job as a satirical cartoonist has now largely been ignored in the increasing digitisation of the press, it makes the point that perhaps we had more time for each other before cellphones and tablets, with the 70’s bistro being remarkably lively and chatty, with no one zoning out engrossed on their individual screen, and knew more people, in genuine terms rather than vague online connections, but without being Luddite it shows how Marianne has embraced technology in a way her husband hasn’t or perhaps can’t, he being a man very much stuck in his ways, simply because they are what he knows and what he values.

There’s a lot going on here, from the various relationships, Vincent and Marianne, Vincent / Margot (as Marianne), Antoine / Margot, and Antoine is intrigued by Vincent, simply through his wanting to revisit his own life rather than act out a fantasy of someone else’s, and the situation of course gets more complicated as Vincent becomes more and more embedded in this artificial past and wants to stay, causing some critics to note that in essence it becomes almost a traditional French farce, albeit with very modern settings.

And Bedos’ film found a warm reception from the critics, The Hollywood Reporter finding ‘… the sort of vastly entertaining mainstream French film that was produced with regularity during the 1970s-'80s and was sometimes remade by Hollywood. Those days are long gone but it could happen with this witty, sexy and original romantic comedy that touches many points of satisfaction […] Everything clicks here, all the time’, and Cineuropa advising ‘It is best to go blind into Nicolas Bedos’ La Belle Époque screened out of competition at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival; to let yourself be taken by surprise and carried away from the very first scene, which is in fact made of several interlocking scenes. In this structure - the film’s great asset, its beginning and its end - one can already feel the glee, the vertigo, and the elation of the film’s mise en scene’. Variety suggested ‘In the end, the story’s custom reenactment gimmick may not even have been necessary, so well-written and executed is the personal journey that underlies it’, while The List simply called it ‘Romantic, nostalgic and beautifully acted, it's one of the best films of the year’.