(courtesy IMDb)
In every way that matters to the social mores of 1958, Hélène and Michel Dupuis (Elsa Zylberstein and Didier Bourdon respectively) are a typical, happy married couple, each operating within their narrow, heavily-proscribed lanes.
Hélène, immaculately displayed in tightly fashionable, figure hugging dresses and with a not a speck of make-up out of place, spends her days tending house, vacuuming, cooking and, most tediously, washing clothes by hand in the unfinished, claustrophobic basement.
Didier, meanwhile, goes to work with all the other men, his mid-level position in a banking firm, under the sleazily leering Lantier (François Perache), a ticking of the box and nothing more, the only necessity being that he bring home the bacon and control the pursestrings and the household in every conceivable way.
As Cycle of Time (C’était mieux demain) begins, Hélène and Michel are doing what society expects them to do, and while there is a crisis with their daughter Jeanne (Mathilde Le Borgne), life seems to be being lived as it should be, with neither of them, despite some unspoken dissatisfaction from Hélène, really questioning the order of things.
Then, one fateful day, as they argue over whether they should keep a washing machine Hélène won in a competition – as a first generation model of its kind, they are expensive, and beyond the financial reach of even a soundly functioning middle class household like the Dupuises – a spark and some spilled over water send them hurtling forward to 2025 where they wake up to a world that’s well and truly moved on.
Except Hélène and Michel have not.
With an impishly clever eye for comedically rich social commentary and a flair for hugely amusing physical humour, Cycle of Time (C’était mieux demain) goes all in on the time travelling fish-out-of-water trope, making rich narrative hay out of the fact that while Hélène and Michel know this is not their life, everyone around them does not.
Jeanne, who is off to work as they wake up in a world that is most assuredly not 1958, and son Lucien (Maxim Foster), who is not even slightly the nerdy kid they left behind almost 70 years earlier, are a little worried that their parents seem to be having some sort of mental breakdown.
But, given what’s happened, you can understand their parents, thrown unceremoniously by a sparking tussle over self realisation and equal domestic rights, though they aren’t aware of that at the time, being more a little freaked out by their new living arrangements.
Both Elsa Zylberstein and Didier Bourdon absolutely excel in these early scenes, as they do throughout the film, portraying two people who have been dumped into an unknown country without a map, any idea of the social mores of the time, nor that Zoom and small teeny-tiny phones aren’t some sort of corrupting magic.
Even the smart household they own, courtesy of Hélène high ranking job as a regional director at the same bank where her husband only sort of excelled, is a source of alarm and consternation and a rich mine for comedy that hits all the right notes, serving up funny scene after funny scene while beautifully conveying how frightening it would be to be alone in a world they no longer know well.
But as with all smart time travel movies, and Cycle of Time (C’était mieux demain) written by Julien Lambroschini and Vinciane Millereau (the latter also directs the film) is definitely up there with the best, giving off Back to the Future with its masterfully delivered mix of serious social observation and goofy comedic silliness, eventually, if clumsily, Hélène and Michel find their groove and begin to live their new lives with some degree of awareness and comfort, even if neither of them feels completely at home.
You can’t discuss much about where the film heads after the unnervingly hilarious days of their arrival in the 21st century without giving far too much away, but suffice to say that Cycle of Time (C’était mieux demain) manages the shift from disoriented to at-ease as much as they can be with ease, making the Dupuises transition to denizens of 2025 feel wholly believable.
But again, they are temporally displaced, and while Hélène adapts most readily – she is the breadwinner, thrilled to have her own money, true autonomy and a freedom that 1958 always denied her, and all women, of course; Michel, meanwhile, is a stay-at-home guy and it takes him longer to adjust – each, despite life-changing epiphanies which change completely how they see themselves, their family and their place in the world (whenever it is), come to wonder if 2025 is really the time for them.
That sets in train, naturally, the time travel trope of trying to get back home, which means recreating the events that threw them unceremoniously into 2025 in the first place, but even here, this skillfully wrought film manages to be both hilarious and poignant all at once.
The magic of Hélène Cycle of Time (C’était mieux demain) is that it always keep the comedy and the rich character development, which happens hand-in-hand with its incisively clever but never heavy-handed social commentary, in perfect lockstep, its story never tipping either into comedic overdrive or maudlin self-examination, a perfectly satisfying time travel movie that knows that even though the premise might be outlandish, the humanity at its heart is most certainly not.
In fact, for all the fun that is had with the couple trying to figure out who they are and why they are in a world that no longer provides any sound guidance – they get there eventually but it’s messy, funny and sad in equally brilliant measure – Cycle of Time (C’était mieux demain) never forgets that there are people at its heart.
Like all the good time travel movies before it, Cycle of Time (C’était mieux demain) delivers spectacle and humanity together, but always understanding how real people would react in such extraordinary circumstances and letting that awareness infuse this funnily poignant film which delivers on every level and leaves you feeling hugely amused but also quietly thoughtful as you walk out into the world from the cinema feeling like this madcap world we live in makes just a little more sense that it did some two hours earlier.