Arash AziziFor the fifth year in a row, Cannes Film Festival opened with a French film. Leave One Day (Partir un jour), debut by Amelie Bonnin,is a humane musical comedy that is playing out of competition. Its choice in many ways exemplifies the festival. Cannes is a master of balancing out different urges: the urge to be cutting edge artistically and to be relevant commercially; to be international, and even a little America-obsessed, but also unmistakably French; to be resolutely political in its own way but also loyal to its artistic ways.
To pick a joyfully light film like Leave One Day speaks to Cannes’s confidence about itself. It is not trying hard to impress us. It rather eases us into the festival, allowing us to relax before we get to the intense 10 days throughout which the 22 competition films, and dozens of titles from the side sections, take all our attention.
At the core of Leave One Day is that most familiar of cinematic tropes: Young woman who has made it in Paris goes back to her hometown for a troubling encounter with the life she left behind long ago. In this version, the lead is Cecile, a Top Chef-winning Parisian, played by French singer Juliette Armanet in her debut as an actor. When her father is hit by his third heart attack, Cecile goes back home for a visit. Cecile’s parents (Gerard and Fanfan, played by Francois Rollin and Dominique Blanc) run a delightful little truck stop restaurant that has clearly been both a source of inspiration and frustration to her.
It is mostly the latter that shows. Cecile is here to beg her father to stop working for the sake of his health. He should be proud of her award-winning celebrity chef daughter but he scorns her for looking down on their provincial ways. The tense relationship is not helped by him being a difficult person in general. When Cecile tells her mom that she finds him “impossible,” the mom agrees – but that doesn’t stop her from loving him and working with him.
The film’s tag line emphasizes Cecile’s encounter with her high school crush, the devilishly handsome Raphael (Bastien Bouillon), thus utilizing an always popular theme (just look at how well Past Lives did.) Raphael and Cecile recount their was-so-close-but-didn’t-happen romance of their teen years (Rapahel was more into “big-boobed Jennifer,” impervious to Cecile’s crush.) There also comes a triangle dimension when Cecile’s partner (Sofiane played by Tewfik Jallab) shows up to the small town and ends up beating up Raphael.
But, for me, the most touching relationship in the film wasn’t around that triangle but that of Cecile and her parents. What’s more unfailingly human than people loving each other despite all their disfunctions? One of the funniest bits in the film is Gerard carrying a little notebook around, reading the quotes of Cecile from Top Chef that he finds insulting and annoying (“Where I grew up, when I said I wanted to get to Michelin, they though I was talking about tires,” is a particularly biting one.) But if engagement and attention are forms of love, doesn’t this show Gerard’s affection for her wayward daughter?
In Cecile’s attitude to the truck stop restaurant, too, we don’t see a mere rejection. Even as she is annoyed at it, it is in a way only possible for someone who really identifies with something. And after all isn’t the very fact that she become a chef a homage to her parents’ profession? Even if she makes fun of the Macedoine she grew up with and is now known for her lobster bisque souffle.
The film’s musical aspect works very well despite all the fears around the choice of this format (expectedly, the question of its commercial chances came up during the press conference.) Many of the songs are well-known French pop songs which makes it especially endearing to familiar audiences in France and beyond. Both Armanet and Rollin are singers with long careers with little past in cinema (no past at all for Armanet.)
Armanet’s performance is so mature and genuine it is hard to believe this is her first film. It is refreshing that life of a professional young woman balancing out between different priorities is performed without resort to tired stereotypes. The character stands on its own and is deeply convincing. Leave One Day will probably be sold as Bear meets The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (If audiences still remember the cheery 1964 musical.) But it’s a delightful film also thanks to its emotional maturity which doesn’t take away from its musical playfulness. It made me both sing and cry. What more can one expect?
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