My Golden Days is a quintessential French film, subtitled in English, in its U.S. release. Malaise is the driving force of the film.

Paul Dédalus is a man, departing form Tajikstan, and is detained for questioning. The government thinks he is a spy, and wants to interrogate him further. He reveals nothing, so a second agent is brought in . This gentlemen gets him to open up, so he starts talking about his childhood, where it all began. The flashbacks are told like a set of chapters in his story.

As a teen, Paul and his siblings hated their mother. In one scene, he’s threatening her to protect himself and his two siblings, Delphine and Ivan. He runs away and stays with his aunt, and while there, learns that his mother has killed herself. He returns home and helps care for his brother and sister. The father is there, but entirely uninvolved, and has a job where he travels almost constantly, leaving Paul in charge.

While hanging with his sibs, he meets Esther, the popular girl that no Delphine and Ivan dislike. He befriends her. She is very needy, and he is indifferent,  but they fall into a relationaship, regardless. Paul eventually goes off to college, and ingratiates himself into the anthropology program, working closely with a professor. Esther and he exchange many letters, read over the top of scenes throughout the film.

Their relationship deteriorates, and the only reason they seem to stay together is that they need something from each other, but Paul cannot fathom why he needs her, and never admits to it, directly. Paul travels for his schoolwork, most of the time, and it becomes clear to us that he is becoming his father, repeating his patterns to the letter. Paul does not.

I’ve read that this film is a prequel, of sorts, to a 1996 film, My Sex Life, or How I Got Into an Argument.  I have not seen that film, so I cannot comment on how relevant it is. On its own, My Golden Years is not a great movie. Nothing is “Golden”, and the opening of the film has no resolution. Everything that transpires just sort of happens, with Paul and Esther just stumbling onward. They don’t really take charge of their fates – Paul just fails upward, and Esther lets her life  be decided by others.