Marion Vernoux's Bright Days Ahead is a telling change from the French title, Les beaux jours. The original speaks of present joys, the mistranslation — of a promised future. Both titles share an irony. The English title is the name of the seniors club which recently retired dentist Caroline (Fanny Ardant) is given a trial membership in to sample the joys of pottery, theatre, field trips, computer workshops, etc., with her contemporaries. In their camaraderie and activity they seem bound for brighter days, except that their signs of aging and loss continue to build. The women already make a game of recalling their first signs of the doom of aging. But from the future perspective, the present compromises will seem "the bright days."
As a character study, the film holds interest, though Caroline is a complicated woman only partially drawn. Too little insight and a lack of information keep the audience from ever fully engaging with the film, and in the few scenes where background is hinted at — the matter of one daughter’s anger, or the case of the excessive tooth whitening — the emotions never feel like they come from anywhere but a script.
This kind of story has been done to death, especially in European cinema. But this tale of truly learning the difference between passion and love works almost entirely thanks to the strong and radiant work of Ardant in the lead role. Some actors just have that certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ and at 65 years young, Ardant is radiant as she commands every single frame of the film that she is in. She makes this standard story compelling to watch with simple expressions of lust and impending pain, smartly showing her understanding of the impending dissolution of her passionate love affair while still getting the absolute most out of it. Lafitte is solid as the diversionary man swept up in romance discovering how a fleeting passion can never truly replace a life spent together.
Bright Days Ahead is a moderately entertaining diversion, a film absolutely determined to be as inoffensive as possible, and which proves that there is such a thing as too many walks on the beach. There's nothing absolutely outstanding about this film, the script maybe coming the closest to such a description, but it's an entertaining 100 minutes.