A country girl’s search for answers in the belle époque is ingeniously intercut with the adventures of her ragtag descendants in Cédric Klapisch’s film
T
he original French title of Cédric Klapisch’s new film is La Venue de L’Avenir, or The Arrival of the Future; it is an entertaining sentimental fantasy, a chocolate-boxy ensemble picture in Klapisch’s distinctive style, inventing a romantic backstory to the career of Claude Monet and his contemporary, the pioneering photographer Félix Nadar.
These two whiskery bohemians are effectively involved in a Mamma Mia-type paternity puzzle concerning the drama’s female lead. Adèle (Suzanne Lindon) is a fictional young woman who during the belle époque makes a fateful journey to find her errant mother in Paris, leaving behind her sweetheart and the village where she was brought up, in the countryside near Monet’s home town of Le Havre. Her life and times are rediscovered by her descendants in the present day, and we intercut enjoyably between past and present.
For all that this film is about the revolutionary and disruptive business of art, it takes a pretty un-subversive view of art and artists, compatible with the museum gift shop. But I have to admit, it’s executed with brio and comic gusto – the “past” sections, anyway – and Lindon’s performance has charm.
