Dir: Bérenger Thouin | Frànce, Drama 117’
L’Âge d’Or is an evocative and lyrical film that finds an inventive way to approach the experience of wartime through the meeting of archival reality and fictional drama through the story of a young woman who rises from rags to riches with some setbacks on the way.
French filmmaker Bérenger Thouin handles this combination with real skill, integrating wartime and archival footage into the narrative so that it feels less like historical illustration than part of the film’s emotional fabric.
There is a graceful, poetic quality to the filmmaking, with images and fragments of history creating a haunting sense of memory and loss. The imagined drama gives the archival material a human dimension, while the documentary footage in turn lends the fictional elements an unsettling authenticity. It is this interplay between the real and the imagined that gives the film much of its distinctive character.
The woman in question is Jeanne Lavaur who grows up in a butcher’s shop in Northern France in the turn of last century and eventually finds herself managing a large coffee estate in Brazil and finally the châtelaine of an aristocratic mansion.
Souheilq Yacoub gives a textured understated turn, providing a convincing emotional anchor without overwhelming the film’s more delicate, atmospheric qualities. Thouin wisely allows the mood and imagery to carry much of the weight, resulting in a film that feels contemplative rather than conventionally dramatic.
The one significant weakness is the ending, which becomes rather messy and less assured, introducing a degree of narrative ambiguity after such a carefully sustained build-up. It slightly blunts the emotional impact of what has gone before.
Even so, L’Âge d’Or remains an accomplished and moving work, notable for its lyrical sensibility and particularly for Thouin’s imaginative and affecting fusion of archival history with this elegant period piece that will appeal to lovers of 20th century history.
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2026 |