My Golden Days
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: March 18, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 24 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranMar 17, 2016
Film has always been especially effective it portraying what it can feel like, what it can mean to be in love, and My Golden Days is right up there with the best of them. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisMar 17, 2016
My Golden Days is a memory movie, a story told through a glass darkly. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMar 17, 2016
This isn’t only a wise and graceful film but, in its tossed-off way, a great one, with a debut performance — by a young actress named Lou Roy-Lecollinet — that will prove to be unforgettable. Read full review
91
ConsequenceBlake GobleMar 16, 2016
Arnaud Desplechin delivers a thrilling reminiscence that romanticizes and believes in youth’s ungraceful but intense splendors. Read full review
91
The PlaylistOliver LytteltonMay 23, 2015
The film doesn't reinvent the wheel: it is, ultimately, a middle-class-white-boy coming-of-age tale of the kind that the cinema of France, and elsewhere, has never been lacking. But it's written, shot, cut and performed with such palpable joy, intelligence and warmth that it ends up feeling entirely fresh. Read full review
90
TimeStephanie ZacharekMar 22, 2016
Roy-Lecollinet’s face, both haughty and welcoming, both anchors the movie and sets it free in the wind. No wonder Paul can’t shake the memory of it. It’s the thing that will age him before his time—and also keep him young forever. Read full review
90
Village VoiceDanny KingMar 15, 2016
There is serious pain in this movie — pain that endures throughout the years — but also a sincere love for life lived, and life remembered. Read full review
90
Screen DailyLisa NesselsonMay 23, 2015
Arnaud Desplechin’s My Golden Days is touching, involving and very well acted. Read full review
90
VarietyJustin ChangMay 23, 2015
Desplechin perfectly times the moment when drollery ends and anguish begins, and it’s that sense of vulnerability that lends the film an unexpected emotional force as it moves toward its return-home epilogue. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaApr 1, 2016
Wonderfully evocative, funny, sad, complex, and essential passages from a man's childhood and adolescence. Read full review
88
Washington PostStephanie MerryMar 31, 2016
The movie masterfully crystallizes the unruly, episodic nature of memories, re-creating the way certain small things stay with us while other, much larger events recede into a haze of cigarette smoke. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comSimon AbramsMar 18, 2016
My Golden Days exists simultaneously within and outside of its characters' headspace, a testament to Deplechin's powers of imaginative sensitivity. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversMar 18, 2016
Yes, it's in French with English subtitles. Don't worry. Nothing gets lost in translation as this coming-of-age tale brims over with humor, heartbreak and ravishing romance. Read full review
88
New York PostLou LumenickMar 16, 2016
Desplechin draws uniformly superb performances from his young cast, making the coming-of-age genre seem fresh and vital. Read full review
83
The Film StageForrest CardamenisFeb 29, 2016
A coming-of-age film with a broader perspecttive is always welcome, and it paradoxically makes this as evocative and convincing a portrait of youth as the best work of François Truffaut. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzApr 14, 2016
The easiest way to describe My Golden Days is as a coming-of-age romance, but Arnaud Desplechin’s film, with its memories and carefully nursed grudges and moments of heartbreak and betrayal, feels weightier than that. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMar 21, 2016
Oddly, the effect of that imbalance is not just to heighten the charm of the film but to render it more credible: the course of true memory never did run smooth. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijMay 23, 2015
My Golden Days more often privileges emotional truths over historical veracity. This helps not only to make the past dilemmas of the protagonists feel more immediate and real, but also suggests how, looking back, we see our lives as a succession of emotional experiences, not dry historical facts. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesApr 6, 2016
Maybe a dare to Desplechin, in fact: Next time, more Esther, less Paul. She’s still got stories to be told. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyMar 16, 2016
Desplechin tackles drama with wildly confident eclecticism, sometimes even besting Martin Scorsese in pure movie-mad feverishness: iris shots, radically different camera styles, unexpected musical and literary quotations, theatrical flourishes, scenes broken up in collage. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineKenji FujishimaOct 2, 2015
Arnaud Desplechin tries his hand at a coming-of-age tale, and does so with equal doses of mature reflection and youthful impetuosity. Read full review
74
TheWrapTim CogshellMar 22, 2016
My Golden Days is lovely and thoughtful, yet it has elements of a thriller, too. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerApr 1, 2016
Overall this overlong movie is too knowingly coy for its own good. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreMar 15, 2016
As a stand-alone film it flirts with utter incoherence. Read full review
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