United by the unexpected inheritance of a house in Normandy, four estranged cousins discover their family history by retracing their ancestor's steps.
Ratings
Curator score: 5.4/10
IMDb: 7.2/10
Letterboxd: 3.55/5
TMDB: 7.4/10
Director
Cédric Klapisch
Production
Ce qui me meut motion pictures, France 2 Cinéma, La Compagnie Cinématographique, Panache Productions, StudioCanal
Cast
Suzanne Lindon, Abraham Wapler, Vincent Macaigne, Julia Piaton, Zinedine Soualem, Paul Kircher, Vassili Schneider, Sara Giraudeau, Cécile de France, Olivier Gourmet, Claire Pommet, Fred Testot, François Chattot, Raïka Hazanavicius, Angèle Garnier, Valentin Campagne, Cassandra Cano, Stéphane Foenkinos, Jean-Marc Roulot, Marie-Christine Orry
Curator Review
Verdict
A warm, lightly comic family-reunion drama with a strong sense of place and art-history texture, but it leans on familiar inheritance-and-reconciliation beats. Best enjoyed as an amiable ensemble piece rather than a deeply surprising one.
Best for
Viewers who like generational family stories
Fans of French ensemble comedies-dramas
People drawn to art, memory, and place-based storytelling
Audiences in the mood for something gentle and reflective
Skip if
You want a tightly plotted film with high stakes
You prefer very original narrative structures
You are allergic to sentimental family reconciliation
You need a movie with a sharper comic edge
Overview
Colours of Time is the kind of film that treats family history like an archaeological dig: a house, a set of cousins, and a trail back through memory, inheritance, and old emotional damage. Cédric Klapisch keeps the tone light enough to move easily between comedy and melancholy, and the Normandy setting gives the story a pleasant, lived-in sense of geography and time.
Worth noting
The appeal is less in plot twists than in the pleasure of watching estranged relatives slowly become legible to one another. The film seems especially interested in how the past survives through objects, places, and artistic echoes, which gives it a more textured feel than a standard reunion dramedy.
Bottom line
It does, however, operate in familiar lanes: family secrets, romantic tangles, and the soft landing of mutual understanding. If you like Klapisch’s humane, ensemble-driven approach, that familiarity will feel comforting; if you need sharper dramatic conflict or a more daring structure, it may feel pleasantly modest instead of essential.
Top Letterboxd reviews
juflm (2.5★) · 1034 likes
imagine tu fais un film avec POMME et tu lui donnes un HOMME comme love interest et y a aussi JULIA PIATON et tu la fais sortir avec son COUSIN et tu donnes à CECILE DE FRANCE une relation ambigu avec son PROF DE LYCÉE
Alice (3.5★) · 989 likes
François civil était pas dispo du coup ils ont pris abraham wapler
maïoux🪩 (4.5★) · 870 likes
que quelqu'un ARRACHE l'affreuse moustache de Paul Kircher sinon j'en fait une affaire personnelle
A dryly funny, melancholy family drama about responsibility, resentment, and the messy work of reconnection.
Topics
French drama, ensemble comedy-drama, family saga, inheritance, art and memory, Normandy, generational reconciliation, lightly sentimental, coming-of-age-adjacent, contemporary European cinema