La Belle Époque - English subtitled
In this romantic comedy, a cartoonist suffering an existential crisis hires a Virtual Reality (VR) company to recreate a happier time in his marriage.
This high-concept comedy from Nicolas Bedos shrewdly taps into our current technological anxieties and our most basic desire to revisit our glory days. Victor is a sexagenarian cartoonist whose long-time publisher has eliminated their print edition and, with it, his gig. No fan of VR, Victor likes turning pages, touching flesh, and seeing what’s actually before him. Alas, what’s before him is a resentful wife, Marianne, who can no longer stand him.
Longing to escape the present, Victor opts to return to the past – or a simulacrum of it. Enter ‘Time Travellers’, a service that immerses clients in a painstaking re-enactment of whatever historical moment its actors, designers, and builders can conjure. Victor hires the company to return him to May 16, 1974, the day he first met Marianne in a Lyon café. It feels like a beautiful dream. But what happens when it's time to wake up?
Nicolas Bedos, France, 2019, 115 min. French spoken, English subtitles.
With Daniel Auteuil, Guillaume Canet, Doria Tillier, Fanny Ardant, Pierre Arditi, Denis Podalydès.