Leave One Day movie review

“The fifth element” by Luc Besson, “Moulin Rouge!” By BAZ Luhrmann, “Robin Hood” by Ridley Scott, “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and even the Pixar masterpiece “Above” as the first animated film have already opened the Cannes Film Festival. As a rule, it is blockbusters with large stars or new works already deserved director who are honoring the honor of forming the start of the most important film festival in the world. But in the 78th attempt everything is different. For the first time in the history of Cannes there is a feature film debut as an opening film in 2025 – and special known names cannot be discovered in front of the camera. Such a precedible decision naturally stirs up expectations:

Did the festival planners possibly raise an unexpected treasure that we will all talk about in many years? But then “would”Leave One Day“But run in the official competition and not be shown out of competition. Instead, the bittersweet feature film debut of Amélie Bonnin is, above all, damn likeable – and thoroughly through and through French: The protagonist is on the way to the star chee Melancholy chansons votes.

Cécile (singer Juliette Armanet) won the TV chef show “Top Chef” and is two weeks before opening a top restaurant in Paris together with her boyfriend Sofiane (Tewfik Jallab). However, she still lacks a special dish that all skin from the seats and that everyone immediately divides on Instagram. Cécile is therefore so stressed that she herself does not come up with the idea of ​​driving to her parents when she receives the call that her father had been taken to the hospital because of a heart. Sofiane has to force her to drive home, also to support her mother Fanfan (Dominique Blanc), who is now alone with the family-owned Trucker-Klause.

But when Cécile arrives, her father Gérard (François Rollin) has already released himself. Nevertheless, she first helps in the kitchen, where of course a lot of simpler things are cooked than she is used to. In the evening she meets with some friends from her youth, including the mechanic Raphaël (Bastien Bouillon), in which she was obviously quite shot at the time. So all of these feelings come up from a long -repressed youth (mostly in the form of textually adapted chansons), while Cécile also has to cope with the fact that she is obviously pregnant, although sofine and you never want children …

A gender wap remake?

Four years ago, Amélie Bonnin made a 25-minute short film with the César Award, which is also called “Leave One Day” and in which the 1960s also sang in the famous French cinema. Even the main roles are occupied with the same actors. And yet her feature film debut is not simply an expansion of her award-winning short film, which was also referred to as “La La Land 'in the French suburb”, but if a genderwap remake at all: after all, it was François Rollin as Julius, who returns to his home town and meets his childhood friend Caroline played by Juliette Armanet. (At the time of the publication of this criticism, the short film is still available in the Arte media library.) Whether the gender exchange now (apart from pregnancy) is changing again thematically, it remains to be seen …

… but just that the grandiose Juliette Armanet (“Micmags”) is now at the center is reason enough to be happy. Incidentally, despite the above contents, nobody has to worry that “Leave One Day” is the cinema version of a typical Hallmark Christmas film, in which regularly successful career women from the big city recognize that they were completely on the wrong track and that it would be much better to just open a homely bed and breakfast in any kaff. “Leave One Day” briefly deceives it, but is much smarter (and more honest). The film with its exuberant youth loving nostalgia, which is overwhelmed, but cannot wipe a whole lived adult existence aside, is even more likely to be aside, even in phases even the masterful indie hit “Past Lives” by Celine Song.

However, the emotional impacts here do not meet here as “Past Lives”. Instead of crying, smile is more popular here. For example, her father wrote down in his booklet in his chest pocket, which Cécile said in which episode of “Top Chef” everything about her home and childhood in the trucker kitchen-and they were usually not nice things: “When I told my village, I would dream of a Michelin, I would think that I would mean car tires.” A amusing coincidence that your Raphaël handed over his mechanic visa card shortly afterwards, of course with a mature-sliding males.

And then there is also sung, sometimes with, mostly without larger choreographies. They are pieces, many of which are probably only in France (such as Claude François and Michel Delpech) and some are also known all over the world (Céline Dion). You will be tuned here in a form that is specially revised for the film-especially by Armanet's co-stars, not necessarily voice-proof, but always full of feeling. In fact, only the French can actually …

Conclusion: The wonderful Juliette Armanet outshines everything-and then Chanson-Karaoke is also tuned! Sometimes it doesn't need much more for a good mood film that was torn with painful, tender melancholy …

We saw “Leave One Day” at the Cannes Film Festival 2025, where he was shown as an opening film except competition.