The original French title of Cédric Klapisch’s new film is La Venue de L’Avenir, or The Arrival of the Future; it is an entertaining sentimental fantasy, a chocolate-boxy ensemble picture in Klapisch’s distinctive style, inventing a romantic backstory to the career of Claude Monet and his contemporary, the pioneering photographer Félix Nadar.
These two whiskery bohemians are effectively involved in a Mamma Mia-type paternity puzzle concerning the drama’s female lead. Adèle (Suzanne Lindon) is a fictional young woman who during the belle époque makes a fateful journey to find her errant mother in Paris, leaving behind her sweetheart and the village where she was brought up, in the countryside near Monet’s home town of Le Havre. Her life and times are rediscovered by her descendants in the present day, and we intercut enjoyably between past and present.
For all that this film is about the revolutionary and disruptive business of art, it takes a pretty un-subversive view of art and artists, compatible with the museum gift shop. But I have to admit, it’s executed with brio and comic gusto – the “past” sections, anyway – and Lindon’s performance has charm.
In the present day, dozens of descendants of Adèle are contacted by the lawyers and PRs working for a property company that wants to build a vast new shopping mall, which would mean bulldozing Adèle’s derelict cottage, closed up since 1944. This garrulous ragtag bunch – including teacher Abdelkrim (Zinedine Soualem), fashion photographer Seb (Abraham Wapler), executive Céline (Julia Piaton) and beekeeper Guy (Vincent Macaigne) – need to give their collective consent. Intrigued by their inheritance, they crowbar their way into the dusty cottage to find a veritable Tutankhamun tomb of historical secrets: photos, letters and even what might be a painting.
Their detective work is interspersed, often ingeniously, with what Adèle in her own day discovers about her errant mother, Odette (Sara Giraudeau), and what she has been doing in Paris all these years to get the money she has been sending back to Adèle. It all comes to a wacky climax when our present-day claimants have an Ayahuasca psychoactive experience, which sends them back in time to encounter these historical culture icons in person at an exhibition, resulting in Victor Hugo making improper advances towards Céline. It’s the kind of French movie for which you’ll need a sweet tooth, but it’s tasty.
• Colours of Time is in UK cinemas from 17 April.
