Golden Days: The Films of Arnaud Desplechin will bring the acclaimed director to the Film Society of Lincoln Center March 11-17 in celebration of the theatrical premiere of his latest opus, My Golden Days, which was an official selection of the 53rd New York Film Festival. The Film Society is a longtime champion of Desplechin, with six of nine films in the series having played in NYFF, and we are pleased to revisit the director’s remarkable achievements in the week leading up to his newest release.

One of the key French artists of the post–New Wave, Desplechin makes endlessly surprising, gloriously messy movies that burst at the seams with richly realized characters, freewheeling stylistic invention, and wide-ranging allusions to art, literature, and film history. A master choreographer of sprawling ensemble casts, he works regularly with leading lights of the French cinema, including Mathieu Amalric, Catherine Deneuve, and Emmanuelle Devos, actors who embody his remarkably complex, human creations. Though they deal with weighty themes—mortality, heartbreak, the traumas of history—Desplechin’s films are rarely heavy, buoyed by streaks of mischievous comedy and the director’s deeply felt humanism. Encompassing all the pathos, romance, comedy, and strangeness of real life, these are films to get lost in.

Desplechin will be here for a sneak preview of My Golden Days, which led the César nominations with an impressive 11 nods including Best Film and Best Director, as well as for Kings and Queen (2004) and his debut feature, La vie des morts (1991). La vie des morts, The Sentinel (1992), and Desplechin’s breakthrough, My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument (1996), will screen in stunning new restorations within this full-career retrospective, showcasing 25 years of the thriving modern master.

Golden Days: The Films of Arnaud Desplechin was organized by Florence Almozini. Special thanks to Arnaud Desplechin. Tickets will go on sale Thursday, February 25. A Discount Package and an All-Access Pass will be available.

Lineup:

My Golden Days / Trois Souvenirs de ma jeunesse
Arnaud Desplechin, France, 2015, 123m
French, Russian, and Hebrew with English subtitles
Arnaud Desplechin’s alternately hilarious and heartrending latest work is intimate yet expansive, a true autobiographical epic. Mathieu Amalric—Jean-Pierre Léaud to Desplechin’s François Truffaut—reprises the character of Paul Dédalus from the director’s groundbreaking My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument (NYFF, 1996), now looking back on the mystery of his own identity from the lofty vantage point of middle age. Desplechin visits three varied but interlocking episodes in his hero’s life, each more surprising and richly textured than the next, and at the core of his film is the romance between the adolescent Paul (Quentin Dolmaire) and Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet). Most directors trivialize young love by slotting it into a clichéd category, but here it is ennobled and alive in all of its heartbreak, terror, and beauty. Le Monde recently referred to Desplechin as “the most Shakespearean of filmmakers,” and boy, did they ever get that right. My Golden Days is a wonder to behold. An NYFF53 selection. A Magnolia Pictures release.
Tuesday, March 15, 6:30pm (Sneak Preview – Q&A with Arnaud Desplechin)
Friday, March 18, 6:30pm (Opening Day – Q&A with Arnaud Desplechin)

A Christmas Tale

A Christmas Tale

A Christmas Tale / Un conte de Noël
Arnaud Desplechin, France, 2008, 35mm, 152m
French with English subtitles
As the wildly dysfunctional Vuillard family gathers for the holidays, they’re rocked by the news that matriarch Junon (an imperious Catherine Deneuve) is ill and in need of a bone marrow transplant. When it turns out that the only blood matches are her black-sheep son (Mathieu Amalric) and troubled grandson (Emile Berling), an emotional tug-of-war over who will be the donor plays out against the hilarious, heartbreaking, chaotic backdrop of a family reunion. Filled to the brim with playful stylistic touches—iris shots, shadow puppets, an extended homage to Vertigo—and acted to perfection by the top-notch ensemble cast, this bittersweet holiday fable is uncommonly wise, affecting, and attuned to the mysterious inner workings of a family. An NYFF46 selection.
Saturday, March 12, 8:00pm
Wednesday, March 16, 7:00pm

Esther Kahn
Arnaud Desplechin, France/UK, 2000, 35mm, 142m
One of the most beguiling, profound films ever made about the elusive art of acting, Desplechin’s first English-language work stars Summer Phoenix in a fascinating, almost feral performance as the enigmatic title character, who goes from rebellious, odd-duck child of the Jewish slums to celebrated stage actress in late-19th-century London. With its starkly unromanticized depiction of the theater and outré central performance, Esther Kahn divided critics upon its release, but has since rightfully emerged as an auteurist cause célèbre for the way that it pinpoints the mysterious, alchemical combination of personality, ambition, and often painful lived experience that goes into crafting a performance.
Saturday, March 12, 5:00pm
Monday, March 14, 4:00pm

Jimmy P.
Arnaud Desplechin, USA/France, 2013, 117m
In the late 1940s, at the progressive Menninger Clinic, two mavericks bonded, not simply as therapist and patient, but as friends united by their personal experiences as outsiders. Arnaud Desplechin’s extraordinarily intelligent and moving adaptation of Georges Devereux’s landmark work of ethnographic psychoanalysis stars Benicio Del Toro as the titular Jimmy P., a Blackfoot Indian and World War II veteran suffering from what initially seems like severe post-traumatic stress, and Mathieu Amalric as Devereux, a Hungarian Jew who reinvented himself many times over before coming to the U.S. to study Mohave Indian culture. Both actors are at the top of their game and their interaction makes the best case for the “Talking Cure” ever depicted in a fiction film. An NYFF51 selection.
Sunday, March 13, 7:30pm
Wednesday, March 16, 4:00pm

Kings and Queen / Rois et reine
Arnaud Desplechin, France, 2004, 35mm, 150m
English, French, and German with English subtitles
Desplechin risks everything to achieve the sublime in this wild, consistently surprising seriocomedy, which begins as a dual character study of two people in extreme emotional duress: Nora (Emmanuelle Devos), a single mother unraveling as she copes with a dying father, and Ismaël (Mathieu Amalric), her unstable ex-husband whose propensity for dressing in outlandish costumes and passing forged checks lands him in a mental institution run by Catherine Deneuve’s steely psychiatrist. As their lives once again converge, fantasy and reality collapse and Desplechin steers the film into ever more unexpected, surreal, and ultimately moving territory. Bonus: Amalric break-dancing for an audience of psych-ward patients. An NYFF42 selection.
Saturday, March 12, 2:00pm
Thursday, March 17, 7:00pm (Q&A with Arnaud Desplechin)

Kings and Queen. Photo: Why Not Productions / The Kobal Collection.

Kings and Queen [Image courtesy of Why Not Productions / The Kobal Collection]

The Sentinel / La sentinelle
Arnaud Desplechin, France, 1992, 139m
French with English subtitles
Desplechin’s feature debut is an absorbing, offbeat thriller set in the shadowy world of international espionage. Recently arrived in Paris from Germany, a young medical student (Emmanuel Salinger) makes a grisly discovery in his luggage: the shriveled, severed head of an unknown man. This shocking surprise plunges him into a Kafka-esque mystery as he embarks on an obsessive quest to determine the man’s identity. Channeling the paranoid, conspiracy-laden tone of the films of French New Wave titan Jacques Rivette, The Sentinel is a provocative, intricately constructed exploration of the traumas of post–World War II Europe and the lingering legacy of the Cold War. An NYFF30 selection. New digital restoration courtesy of Why Not Productions.
Sunday, March 13, 4:30pm
Tuesday, March 15, 3:30pm

My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument / Comment je me suis disputé… (ma vie sexuelle)
Arnaud Desplechin, France, 1996, 178m
French with English subtitles
Desplechin’s freewheeling, breathlessly inventive international breakthrough stars Mathieu Amalric (radiating impish charm in a César Award–winning performance) as a navel-gazing academic who bounces between lovers as he struggles to break things off with his long-term girlfriend (a luminous Emmanuelle Devos). Pushing the Gallic sex farce to dizzying (and disarmingly moving) new heights, Desplechin’s sophisticated take on the genre encompasses a grab bag of New Wave–inspired stylistic tricks, a soundtrack that runs the gamut from hip-hop to Ravel, and an unforgettable, subtly surreal sequence involving a monkey and a radiator. The result is “a delayed coming-of-age masterpiece and one of the great French post–New Wave films” (Amy Taubin, Artforum). An NYFF34 selection. New digital restoration courtesy of Why Not Productions.
Friday, March 11, 7:00pm
Monday, March 14, 7:00pm

Playing ‘In the Company of Men’ / En jouant ‘Dans la compagnie des hommes’
Arnaud Desplechin, France, 2003, 35mm, 121m
French with English subtitles
The celebrated playwright Edward Bond wrote In the Company of Men (no relation to Neil LaBute’s film of the same title) at the height of his disgust over modern capitalist culture. Arnaud Desplechin did for Bond’s play—about a young businessman who goes to ruin trying to outmaneuver his arms-manufacturer father—what Louis Malle did for Uncle Vanya: the dramatic action itself, shot with a hyperactive handheld camera, alternates with footage of the actors auditioning, rehearsing, and gearing up to perform. Desplechin locates Bond in a high-tragedy tradition stretching from Sophocles to Shakespeare: at one point, deciding the play lacks enough female roles, the cast splice in one of Ophelia’s scenes from Hamlet.
Sunday, March 13, 2:00pm
Thursday, March 17, 4:00pm

La vie des morts
Arnaud Desplechin, France, 1991, 54m
French with English subtitles
In the wake of a young man’s suicide attempt, his family gathers in their large house in the country, where complex interrelationships play out against a tense vigil. Winner of the 1991 Jean Vigo Prize, Desplechin’s rarely screened featurette displays many of the hallmarks of his mature style: the deft handling of a sprawling cast of characters (played by several Desplechin regulars, including Emmanuelle Devos), the nuanced understanding of family dynamics, and the wide-ranging literary allusions. All come together in an incisive, poignant examination of the myriad ways we deal with tragedy. New digital restoration courtesy of Why Not Productions.
Friday, March 11, 5:00pm
Tuesday, March 15, 9:30pm (Introduction by Arnaud Desplechin)