Cédric Klapisch (“Lonely Zweisam”) made a name for itself primarily with the ensemble comedies of the so-called Xaver trilogy: the first part, “L'Auberge Espagnole” about a group of foreign students in Barcelona, was also a cinema with almost 400,000 visitors in Germany. But with “The colors of the time“The French director now goes one step further: this time the even more extensive figure arsenal, which is well -occupied in the smallest supporting role, does not come from different countries, but directly from different centuries.
Sometimes it doesn't even take a cut to jump back and forth between the Paris of 1894 and the Paris of 2024. For fans of the Seine metropolis, this is certainly a dream! But the teachings, the clapic and its regular Co author Santiago Amigorena (“The Wine and the Wind”) pull out of the epochs, rarely reach depth than an average calendar. There is a winking reunion with pretty much everything that had a name in times of the French Proto-Avantgarde-whether in painting, photography, literature or on stage.
Adèle Meunier Née Vermillard (Suzanne Lindon) is looking for her mother in Paris in 1894, who never got to know her.
The new mega mall near Paris is to get 3,000 parking spaces. But there is still a small house in the way of the building, which once belonged to Adèle Meunier Née Vermillard, but has not been open since 1944. The research has shown that there are around 30 inheritances, who, however, hardly know each other. It is determined that four of them should go there to see before the sale, which is still in the house – even in references to the history of the family.
When the door opens for the first time after 80 years, it is almost as if the teacher Abdel (Zinedine Soualem), the beekeeper Guy (Vincent Macaigne), the expert for disruptive Innovation Céline (Julia Piaton) and the Content Creator Seb (Abraham Wapler) are entering an impact on the world. And indeed: when Seb makes a little nap after a 15-hour video shoot the day before, he suddenly dreams of his ancestor. The young Adèle (Suzanne Lindon) set off in 1894 to look for her mother, which she left behind shortly after birth …
More picture or more ego
In the first scene, Seb films his influencer friend for a fashion shoot in front of an impressionist painting in a museum. However, he should choose the setting in such a way that as much of her as possible and as little as possible can be seen from the picture. This art-cretin entry not only points out that Claude Monet (Olivier Gourmet) will play a very central role later. It is immediately clear that Seb should rather look for another-and in fact he later films a music video for the trendy singer-songwriter Fleur (pomme), who asks him not to take too much of her, but rather from his in the picture. So everything is clear-and this is about the level that sets the sound for most of the numerous small vignettes around the contemporary figures.
In the end, Seb will thank his grandfather (François Chattot) to have forced him to travel to the house of his ancestor with the other heritage. After all, he would have only lived towards the future – but now, by looking back into the past, learning a lot. More than these typical wisdoms, which only sound very smart at first when you spotted them on a posting on social media, cannot actually have come around. Which, by the way, does not mean that the two hours of “the colors of the time” do not still have their charm – at least as consistently entertaining and sometimes humorous, bourgeois entertainment.
The Content Creator Seb (Abraham Wapler) is one of the heirs who are looking for potentially valuable pieces in the house of their ancestor.
The loudest laugh in the film is one that we have seen in exactly the past few years – some in the cinema, but some maybe even in real life: One of the even older heirs does not know how to serve zoom properly – and therefore appear as a sad animated cat in his screen window. But there is also “the colors of the time” full of small observations that are not particularly profound, but still amusing. So Klapisch contrasts his inheritance group's constantly shooting mobile phone photos in the studio of the famous photographer Félix Nadar (Fred Testot), who not only encourages his customers with an excruciating long seconds not to move, but also say goodbye with the words that the result would probably be available in two weeks.
The coachman (Raphaël Thiéry), who chauffeures the 21-year-old (!) Adèle for the first piece of the way to Paris, swaddles from the fact that the children were self-employed so early today-that would have been very different in his time. Times change, but probably not as much as you always believe. So it is only coherent that a door closes in 2024 and opens the next moment in 1894-and when Adèle climbs the stairs into the city for the first time at the Parisian Kai and bends around the corner, a jogger comes towards us in a modern marathon outfit. The transitions are fluid, with the past – with the newly built Eiffel Tower, the beginnings of the electrification and the specially created garden of Claude Monet – at least when it comes to a clear point victory in terms of show values.
Conclusion: A must for Paris fans-otherwise so Lala.
We saw “The colors of the time” at the Cannes Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated its world premiere out of competition.