LEAVE ONE DAY
Opening film – Leave One Day by Amélie Bonnin: What remains…
For the first time in the Festival’s history, a first feature film directed by a woman opens the 78th edition. Building on the success of Partir un Jour (Leave One Day), her short film, which received a César in 2023, Amélie Bonnin presents a long version Out of Competition, with the same title and imbued with the same delicious nostalgia. However, there is a significant difference between the two works, the feature film, conceived like a musical, gives a leading role to a female protagonist, played by Juliette Armanet.
The short film followed Raphaël (Bastien Bouillon), back in his hometown where he ran into Cécile (Juliette Armanet), his childhood sweetheart. Conceived as a continuation of her short film, the opening film, however, no longer focuses on Raphaël’s character, but instead, in line with Amélie Bonin’s more feminist perspective, on Cécile, a 40-year-old brilliant chef who reunites with her parents in her childhood restaurant.
“I wanted to film a woman of that age, since it’s a touching age. We have left our youth behind, yet at the same time there are still so many things that must be done!”
The director, who has a degree in graphic art, creates a role-reversal by giving a much larger role to the author-composer-actor Juliette Armanet. In the story, Cécile, winner of the show Top Chef, returns to a backdrop of roadside restaurants in Eastern France and develops feelings of guilt not only toward her mother, Dominique Blanc who runs the front of the restaurant, but especially toward her father, François Rollin, who mans the kitchen.
“I think that we don’t talk enough about father/daughter relationships in films. Here, I felt there was an opportunity to talk about this generation of men who has not been taught to communicate.”
French pop songs are woven into these familial and love stories creating an enhanced shared musical memory score, with beautiful roles for Dalida, Claude Nougaro and 2Be3, whose hit Partir un jour (Leave One Day) lends its title to the film.
Amélie Bonnin delivers a tender movie on relationships, on individuals, on places, on memories—on these invisible threads that last, even as years have gone by and distances have grown larger.