Keswick Film Club - Colours Of Time

Synopsis

A French comedy drama, our opening film this season was chosen by the members...twice! First time round it was not available, but we finally have it.

We meet four people who, themselves, have never met before. They have been gathered together by a development company who want to knock down a cottage, empty since 1944; unknowingly, they have inherited this from Adèle Meunier who disappeared back then looking for her own mother she had not seen for 20 years. Are you still with me?!

The cottage turns out to be full of clues and memorabilia that set them off looking into Adèle's past; where did she go, who was she? Their search for her history is then comically interlaced
with their own discovery of their future - the 'arrival of the future' of the original title.

Much of the film then takes us back to the past, to Paris at the start of the 20th century, where our fictional character is mixed beautifully into the lives of real historic figures. Adèle finds her mother...but who was her father..?

"Past, present and a generous helping of poetic license all merge entertainingly in Cédric Klapisch's classy, if shamelessly contrived 'Colours of Time'. A thoughtful comic meditation on changing social mores over approximately 125 years, Klapisch's film reexamines some much-loved myths and images of French history – particularly from the heyday of Impressionism – looking back at the origins of modernity from the vantage point of an anxious present which, the film contends, has forgotten how to live" - Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily.

A fun ride through French history, then; buckle up and let's go!