The easiest way to describe "My Golden Days" is as a coming-of-age romance, but Arnaud Desplechin's film, with its memories and carefully nursed grudges and moments of heartbreak and betrayal, feels weightier than that.

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic, 2016-04-14

The details - some funny, some intensely painful - of Paul and Esther's relationship over the years have a cumulative power that isn't diminished by a few loose ends.

Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle, 2016-04-14

Desplechin draws uniformly superb performances from his young cast, making the coming-of-age genre seem fresh and vital.

Lou Lumenick, New York Post, 2016-04-08

Dense, lyrical, and polymorphous.

Peter Keough, Boston Globe, 2016-04-07

...you don't need to see "My Sex Life" to enjoy "My Golden Days," which is wonderful by merit for several reasons, including young stars...

Tim Cogshell, TheWrap, 2016-04-07

There are some perceptive passages dealing with the infuriating inconstancy of young love, and a few pointed scenes featuring the adult Paul (played by Mathieu Amalric), but overall this overlong movie is too knowingly coy for its own good.

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor, 2016-04-01

Wonderfully evocative, funny, sad, complex, and essential passages from a man's childhood and adolescence.

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer, 2016-04-01

Desplechin presents the high schoolers' relationships with an adult complexity, from which the grown-up Paul seems to stand back in awe.

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader, 2016-03-31

The movie masterfully crystallizes the unruly, episodic nature of memories, re-creating the way certain small things stay with us while other, much larger events recede into a haze of cigarette smoke.

Stephanie Merry, Washington Post, 2016-03-31

Will My Golden Days... come to be considered a classic? I'd like to think so, and not only because of the film's winning grace and buoyancy.

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal, 2016-03-24

The movie runs along a well-worn groove, both in its fealty to adolescent sorrows and in its stout conviction that cigarettes constitute a major food group. As in all Desplechin films, however, surprises are continually sprung ...

Anthony Lane, New Yorker, 2016-03-21

"My Golden Days" exists simultaneously within and outside of its characters' headspace, a testament to Deplechin's powers of imaginative sensitivity.

Simon Abrams, RogerEbert.com, 2016-03-18

Desplechin crafts My Golden Days as if he'd never made a movie before, as if youthful emotions were spilling all over it. The result is an exhilarating gift.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone, 2016-03-18

"My Golden Days" contains an intoxicatingly realistic portrayal of the intense emotionality, the intertwined joy and pain, of first love. It's not the whole film, but its power is so strong it feels like it is.

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times, 2016-03-17

The story is straightforward; the telling, less so.

Manohla Dargis, New York Times, 2016-03-17

It's impossible to say how autobiographical My Golden Days is, but there's no question that it's profoundly personal.

Mark Jenkins, NPR, 2016-03-17

It's a treat to watch, covered in eccentric strokes and oddball details that seem too specific not to be extremely personal.

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club, 2016-03-17

There is serious pain in this movie - pain that endures throughout the years - but also a sincere love for life lived, and life remembered.

Danny King, Village Voice, 2016-03-15

Arnaud Desplechin and Mathieu Amalric revisit the adventures of Paul Dedalus in this marvelously vivid coming-of-age drama.

Justin Chang, Variety, 2015-07-20

While the ghosts of teen romances past no doubt hover over many of us, after a while you might find yourself wanting to slap Paul Dedalus across the face.

Tom Long, Detroit News, 2016-04-08