Daddy Nostalgie [These Foolish Things [Daddy Nostalgia] **** (1990, Dirk Bogarde, Jane Birkin, Odette Laure) – Classic Movie Review 4,873

While retired English businessman (Dirk Bogarde) is recuperating from heart surgery, his adult daughter Caroline (Jane Birkin) comes from Paris to visit him and her mother, in Bertrand Tavernier’s impressive 1990 drama film Daddy Nostalgie. 

In his final film role, Dirk Bogarde (aged 69) rises to the challenge of his best role in years with a convincing, touching, unmannered performance as Daddy, the nostalgic, sick old father of the original title in co-writer/director Bertrand Tavernier’s impressive 1990 family relationships drama film Daddy Nostalgie.

On the French Riviera in autumn, while retired English businessman Daddy is recuperating from heart surgery, his adult daughter Caroline (Jane Birkin), a freelance scriptwriter, comes from Paris to visit him and her mother, Miche (Odette Laure). The three of them examine their relationships, and Caroline and Daddy begin to communicate properly for the first time.

Bogarde with Jane Birkin at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.

Odette Laure and Jane Birkin support Bogarde loyally and strongly as Daddy’s French wife of many years and his daughter. They talk of old times, old bitterness, permanent love and the ties that bind.

It can be seen as a Gallic On Golden Pond, and if this is virtually home-movie filmed theatre, it is a moving film of the highest quality, and there is some very finely honed dialogue. It is co-written by Colo Tavernier O’Hagan, Tavernier’s ex-wife, who provides the original story and shares the credit for screenplay dialogue.

Sadly, it proved Bogarde’s last movie. He was knighted in 1992 and died on 8 May 1999, aged 78.

In America they simply translated the title as Daddy Nostalgia but in the UK they tried out These Foolish Things.

The film is dedicated to Michael Powell, who died just before its release.

Bertrand Tavernier was born on 25 April 1941. He died on 25 March 2021 at age 79.

Jane Birkin died at her home in Paris on 16 July 2023, at the age of 76 after having a stroke in 2021.

London-born Birkin began her career in minor roles in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup (1966), and in Kaleidoscope (1966). She appeared in the controversial film Je t’aime moi non plus (1976) under Serge Gainsbourg’s direction and found international acting fame with the Agatha Christie films Death on the Nile (1978), and Evil Under the Sun (1982).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 4,873

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