Leave One Day

Every so often Amélie Bonnin’s first film bursts into song - not the kind of production numbers so beloved of Hollywood or the likes of Jacques Demy but pop standards that may mean a lot to generations of French music lovers but less so to anyone else.

She serves up a tale of a celebrity chef Cécile (played by the singer Juliette Armanet) who is based in Paris and is about to open her own restaurant but still feels drawn back to her roots in the country on occasions. Her parents run the roadside restaurant where Cécile learned to cook.

The visit coincides with her discovery that she is pregnant with her partner (Tewfik Jallab) in her new culinary pursuits and she’s not entirely sure how she will cope. First off she needs to create a signature dish although her cantankerous father (François Rollin), who has suffered three heart attacks, is unlikely to be much help. Cécile feels much closer to her mother (Dominique Blanc) who wants her father to give up work on health grounds.

Mix in the friends from her youth, including Bastien Bouillon as Raphael, a slacker with similar pals and a culture of aimless drinking, and Bonnin sets the scene for some emotional fireworks. Will Cécile terminate the pregnancy? Will she hook again with Raphael? And how will her parents react to her new-found airs and graces?

The narrative bowls along from one set piece-chanson to another with Armanet proving in the acting stakes that she is more than just a robust voice and possesses a natural screen presence. There’s an undeniable chemistry in her relationship with Raphael which keeps the drama simmering nicely.

Bonnin harnesses all the conflicting elements with skill and imagination(it probably helps that some of the material and basic ideas came out of a short film she made, which won her a César award three years ago). It’s not the only recent French film to eschew Parisian gloss for what seems like rural nostalgia, a settling of accounts with the past and the eternal conundrums of life’s choices.

Reviewed on: 22 May 2025