Les plus belles années d’une vie

Fifty-three years after the phenomenon that was his international blockbuster A Man and a Woman, director Claude Lelouch lured French acting legends Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée out of retirement (he’s now 89 and she’s 88) for a sequel, reuniting 1966’s race-car driver Jean-Louis Duroc and the love of his life, Anne Gauthier, in this moving chronicle of their waning years. The formerly debonair Jean-Louis, confined to an assisted-care home, is growing more and more befuddled by old age, so his son (Antoine Sire) hatches a plan to bring the still spry Anne back into his father’s life. Lelouch makes delicious use of flashbacks to the first movie—and that great theme song—making this a time-travelling delight.

‘There is bittersweet humour and poignant insight here… Seeing these two French screen legends together again, probably for the last time, still creates an almost-tangible chemical fizz. Even at 87, Aimee remains a magnificent human sculpture, while Trintignant tugs the heartstrings as a once-beautiful man sunk into soulful ruin…The Best Years of a Life [the English title] strikes a deeper emotional chord because it is really more concerned with the looming mortality of its stars, its director and even its audience than with the fate of its fictional characters…’—Stephen Dalton, Hollywood Reporter