Cannes Review: Leave One Day is a Nostalgia-Laced Musical That Plays It Safe

Frequent festival-goers learn to not expect much from opening films. Truth is, quality is but one of many factors that lead to the selection for this symbolic slot. In order to avoid offending sensibilities and setting a controversial tone for the whole festival from the get-go, programmers tend to pick something less adventurous or challenging for their curtain-raiser. Even with reasonably lowered expectations, however, French director Amélie Bonnin’s comic-dramatic musical Leave One Day, which opened the 78^th Cannes Film Festival, is an underwhelming experience. There’s no question that this sweet, nostalgia-laced ode to life in the countryside has its heart in the right place, but the lack of nuance and creative risk-taking greatly hampered the delivery of its message. 

Expanded from Bonnin’s 25-minute César-winning short of the same name, the film centers around Cécile (Juliette Armanet), who has left her country home for Paris some time ago to pursue a career as a chef. When her father has a medical emergency, she returns to the rural town she grew up in and tensions old and new flare up. On the one hand, folks seem impressed by this girl who went away, won a cooking competition on TV and is about to open her own restaurant in Paris. On the other hand, there seems to be a note of jealousy or resentment in the way they teasingly congratulate her on all the success. There’s her father, who keeps a notebook of things she’s said on the cooking show and quotes them back to her, emphasizing the disparaging undertone in which she described her upbringing. There’s also Raphaël (Bastien Bouillon), her crush from high school who still harbors unresolved feelings for her all these years later. 

From this brief description you may rightly infer that A) this film celebrates those who feel left behind, unfairly looked down upon by the fancy city folks; and B) the heroine will find herself in a love triangle involving the charming boy from the past. Both are certainly fertile premises to build movies on, but Leave One Day unfolds with such beat-by-beat familiarity it’s hard to feel excited about anything it’s trying to say. Here and there the film makes a poignant observation, like how Raphaël and his middle-aged buddies find themselves trapped in a time warp, living the same lives they’ve always lived and will likely continue to live. Overall, however, it follows a script we’ve seen too many times before, down to the inevitable end where the sophisticated Michelin chef and her proudly provincial father collaborate on a dessert where the best of both worlds meet. Such safe, inoffensive storytelling aims to please every viewer, but without the willingness to go to uncomfortable places, to address painful truths, it doesn’t have what it takes to really reach or change its intended audience. Also, the way the film portrays characters from the country as this homogenous group of hearty, hard-working people propelled by an unrelenting joie de vivre is as endearing as it is stereotypical, even a little patronizing. Probably not what it was going for.

The rekindled romance between Cécile and Raphaël, which reminds them both of simpler, more innocent times, is not the only thing fanning the nostalgia in Leave One Day. The film is also peppered with musical numbers featuring pop songs from the ’90s and ’00s. While some of these serve more than a decorative purpose and actually hit an emotional note, most are rather ineffective. Sure, any chance to hear renditions of Alors on danse or classic Celine Dion is good, but Bonnin hasn’t necessarily found the most meaningful way to work the songs into the story. Oftentimes, characters simply start singing mid-conversation, justified by neither the circumstances nor the music choice, which feels forced and pretty awkward. The fact that these musical interludes tend to be short, covering just a verse or two, renders their insertion even more questionable. A notable exception is the final song “Partir un jour,” from which the film takes its original title. Sung by Armanet as her character leaves home once again, the up-tempo dance track is reworked into a vibe-y ballad whose lyrics describe Cécile’s conflicted mind quite beautifully. 

Besides the melancholic ending where decisions are made and goodbyes are had, a scene at the skating rink stands out for its fun conception and dynamic orchestration. With the help of some nifty design, the two leads travel back down memory lane to the last time they met before Cécile left for Paris. They interact with their teenage friends from 2001 and relive a song they skated to that should have led to their first kiss. Everything from the set, editing to choreography comes together to capture a purely happy moment and showcases Bonnin’s talents in mise-en-scène. 

These occasional sparks aside, Leave One Day is a well-intentioned, dutifully-performed debut feature that fails to wow. Its defenders may blame elitism addressed in the film for such criticism, but no matter where one stands politically, it should not be controversial to expect art to strive for truth. Ultimately, that’s what activates empathy and makes films of any genre work.       

Leave One Day opened the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

The post Cannes Review: Leave One Day is a Nostalgia-Laced Musical That Plays It Safe first appeared on The Film Stage.