Spoilers Alert:
In the third and now final part of the “A Man and a Woman” trilogy, director Claude Lelouch takes another look at the life of the unhappily in love Anne and her former lover Jean-Louis. But anyone who hasn’t had any contact with the films before will get through it The Best Years of a Life hardly have any interest in it. We reveal more about this in our review.
Françoise Gauthier, Anne’s daughter (Souad Amidou), and Antoine Duroc, Jean-Louis’ son (Antoine Sire), on the beach.
At least the symbiosis of several decades of film production creates a nice overview of the development of (French) cinema. As mentioned at the beginning, Antoine Sire, whose acting career is limited to the impersonation of Antoine Duroc, should not have had to formulate this fact in concrete terms. But ultimately you can be a little proud of such an extensive, mammoth project; Even if it wasn’t planned as such from the start. However, it cannot be said with certainty whether it is an admission of the monotony of modern cinema that the scenes that take place in the here and now in “The Most Beautiful Years of Our Lives” no longer offer any special features in terms of production.
“The symbiosis of several decades of film production creates a nice overview of the development of (French) cinema.”
Nonetheless, the camera work is by Robert Alazraki (“La Louve”), which was not previously involved in the “Man and Woman” trilogy, is so unspectacular and the collection of Franco pop hits is so decidedly pleasing that at first glance the film would be placed in the segment of the dozens of French feel-good dramedies , but never as part of a film series, the first of which won all the major film awards in the world. Even the still highly committed acting of the two main actors cannot hide the lack of substance. So it’s basically business as usual.
Conclusion: After “A Man and a Woman” and “Un homme et une femme, 20 ans déjá”, “The Most Beautiful Years of a Life” follows the third part of a romantic-dramatic film series that has always been more about the dynamics of acting and less about narrative substance lived.
“The Best Years of a Life” can be seen in selected USA cinemas from July 2nd.
