La Belle Époque Music By Nicholas Bedos & Anne-Sophie Versnaeyen

Selected in the Out of Competition section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, Nicolas Bedos’ film La Belle Epoque follows Victor, a disillusioned sexagenarian, who sees his life changing the day an entrepreneur offers him to plunge back into the time of his choice. Victor decides to relive the greatest moment of his life, his encounter with what his called his ‘True Love’.

Since 2016, composer Anne-Sophie Versnaeyen has been working with director Nicolas Bedos, with whom she arranged the music for his first film, Monsieur & Madame Adelman. In 2017 she co-composed the music for the opening ceremony of the ‘Molières’, which was presented by Nicolas Bedos.

For the original music to La Belle Epoque, the collaboration started before shooting. Anne-Sophie Versnaeyen explains: “Before shooting, Nicolas invited me to visit the set, so I could soak up the ’70 atmosphere he imagined for La Belle Epoque. The hotel room, the bistro, the streets: we were able to do our first meeting right in the heart of the film and feel what could be the tones and musical atmosphere.”

Their wish for the film’s composition was to have at hand two kinds of musical ‘families’: the first one called “classicals” with an ostinato motif for bassoons and bass clarinets in the bass line; themes by brass instruments and a small string ensemble. The second kind of music is centered around a “ballad” theme with drums, bass instruments, clarinets, guitars and bass guitar, as a reference to independent American cinema. The album also features the remarkable songs of Billie Holiday, Bobby Goldsboro, and many more.