I tracked down the song that plays during the amazing café/bar scene at the beginning of Pialat’s Passe ton bac d’abord. It is “Golden Eldorado” by Voyage. It sets the mood quite hauntingly in the film, kind of ambling and casual with little pushes where it soars. Love the jubilant chorus too. It reminds me a lot of Toto’s “Africa” in how it tries to cram in all this specific vocab–letting you know they’re not joking around with the theme.
While looking for the song I also came across this article, which commemorates the 30th anniversary of the film by catching up with some of the locals in Lens who acted in it, particularly Bernard Tronczak (the one who has the thing with Agnès and the lion bathing suit girl) and Patrick Lepczynski (with the brown hair and mustache).
