Review of 'Twice Upon A Time'

Just binged Twice Upon A Time on Netflix. It's of course a time-travel story -- in this case, a four-part mini-series in French, with English subtitles. It was surprisingly excellent. In fact, downright memorable.

The set-up is as time-travel pat as it comes. A guy stumbles on a way of traveling some months into the past. This enables him to try to make things right with his girlfriend, who broke up with him, and then try to save her life. About as standard as it comes in time-travel romances. But Twice Upon a Time is lifted by a love story so well told that it would have made a worthwhile mini-series even without the time travel, and by time-crossed lovers who are fresh and sensitive, brought to life by top-notch acting.

Freya Mavor plays Louise, who falls in love with Vincent, played by Gaspard Ulliel. Louise is a perfect modern French lover. She loves the way Vincent makes her "come". But when Vincent wakes with her sex, she tells him the next morning not to "take" her when she's sleeping, because she's not "an object". Vincent, for his part, just loves Louise, and when things go wrong, he's more than willing to try the time machine to work things out, though this takes him away from his young son Stanley (also very well played by Sacha Canuyt), which makes the time travel even more emotionally complicated.

Although, technically, I wouldn't say the time travel is done with a machine. It's a cubic wooden box. But I shouldn't throw shade or stones, seeing as how all I gave my time travelers in The Plot to Save Socrates and its sequels was just a plush chair with some digital dials on the arms (and, come to think of it, H. G. Wells' time traveler used a chair as his vehicle in The Time Machine).

But to further the time-travel critique of this wonderful movie, there's no delving into paradoxes in Twice Upon A Time, or even a nod as to why when Vincent goes back in time, he doesn't run into his original self. It may well be that when Vincent went back in time, that act created an alternate universe with a different Vincent, who had knowledge of the future, and Louise, who benefitted from her more knowledgeable lover, and therein became a different person herself. If that's what the writers (Guillaume Nicloux and Nathalie Leuthreau) and director (Guillaume Nicloux) had in mind, it would have helped if that they made some of that more explicit.

But I liked the way the box arrived in Vincent's hands -- by a jovial delivery man. And the mad scientist who made it has possibilities. But it's the relationship that's the message -- not as much between photons and time as between a man and a woman. And speaking of that, there are elements in this movie that reminded me of A Man and a Woman, as well as Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, and that's what makes Twice Upon a Time so enjoyable and its low-key way, even at times magnificent.