colours of time

Some thoughts on

La venue de l'avenir
Cédric Klapisch
France 2025
starring Suzanne Lindon, Cécile de France ...
released in Germany 14.8.2025

I was lucky to catch a subtitled preview of this latest oeuvre by Klapisch in a Düsseldorf cinema this week. The advance info wasn't very clear so I was expecting something family-heavy like Ce qui nous lie (Back to Burgundy). It turned out to be a much broader and more ambitious film that serves an astonishing number of my obsessions including family history,old photos, the handover of visual guide culture from sculpture and painting to photography and film (see the biographies of Renoir father and son), Paris in the Belle Epoque, as well as the music of Pomme (who plays a very cute supporting role that has nothing whatsoever to do with the story).

So the central and ancestral character is Adele (Suzanne Lindon), born in 1873 (which places her in the generation of my great-grandparents, six of whom were born before and two after that year). Her house in rural Normandy hasn't been opened since 1944, but now the local council wants to put up a shopping centre and a massive parking lot in its place, so Adele's 30 or so living descendants are convened to come to an agreement regarding the property. The four family delegates sent to the location discover lots of old photos inside as well as letters and an impressionist painting, so are able to piece together the life story of Adele, which is very cleverly (and very Klapisch-ly) interspersed with the present day lives of the descendants. (There are probably similarities with Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, which I need to rewatch some time, to compare and contrast.)

Although I prefer the untranslatable word play of the original title (literally: the arrival of the future, which reflects all that excitement about modernity in the period), the German and English titles (Colours of time / Farben der Zeit) have a justification in referring to the colours, as those are obviously of prime importance in impressionist art, and the flashbacks are remarkably colourful even when they are pegged to monochrome photos.

There is a lot of art in the film, with the Musée d'orsay at Paris, the Musée d'art moderne André Malraux at Le Havre and Monet's garden all playing significant parts.

Official poster design. The red dress serves as a reminder that Paris in 1894 was just as colourful as today's world.

Monet's painting Impression, Soleil levant plays a role in the film.

NB the film was shown at Cannes this year but the Grauniad hasn't reviewed it?! Shocking.

PS: I have been following Klapisch's films on and off ever since Chacun cherche son chat (When the cat's away) was shown at the Phoenix Picturehouse in Oxford, back in 1996 - those were the days when weird little French films still got a UK release! Strangely, I haven't reviewed any of those that I saw since then, so I should at least list them if only to jog my memory:

• 1996 Chacun cherche son chat
• 1996 Un air de famille (I hated that one, and I have avoided the Jaoui/Bacri comedies ever since)
• 2002 L'auberge espagnole (I rewatch this at least once every 10 years when a sequel comes out)
• 2005 Poupees russes (sequel to Auberge espagnole)
• 2008 Paris
• 2011 Ma part du gateau
• 2013 Casse-tetes chinois (Auberge part 3)
• 2017 Ce qui nous lie
• 2025 La venue de l'avenir