How is Partir un Jour, the opening film of the Cannes Festival?

In the life of the protagonist Cécile (Juliette Armanet), what happens to her in Partir un Jour is a parenthesis. An aside that will not influence the rest of her life in any way. It's true, the woman is pregnant and must choose what to do or not do with the child – even though she knows perfectly well – but the choice to carry the pregnancy to term or not will not affect what she experiences in the film’s limited timeframe, which seems to last just the length of a song. Yes, because Amélie Bonnin’s first feature film, written with Dimitri Lucas, is a musical film. Not a musical. A musical film. From the French tradition of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, without invoking masters like Jacques Demy, the work integrates songs from its own repertoire into the very fabric of the screenplay. There are no big choreographies or dance scenes, even the songs performed by the characters do not require dazzling performances. They are hits that help express the emotions of each person on screen and are played just as we see them: in a moment of couple intimacy, in the secret and flirtatious exchange between mother and daughter, at a dinner with friends. With a single real moment of cinematic enchantment: a whole sequence that transports Cécile and the character of Raphaël (Bastien Bouillon) back in time, in the reconstruction of their youthful years.

It is in fact the protagonist’s former love who returns for an unexpected appearance in her life. Having become a renowned chef, ready to open her first restaurant, Cécile is forced to momentarily interrupt the course of her life to return to her hometown to take care of her father, who refuses to give up his business despite having had a heart attack. On board a truck she hitchhiked on, like a time machine that brought her back to her pre-Paris life, the protagonist will sleep in her old bedroom and work in her parents’ kitchen as if nothing had changed. As if everything had to resume where it had left off, including her relationship with Raphaël. Based on the short film of the same name that Amélie Bonnin later turned into a feature, where she also kept actors Armanet and Bouillon who had already portrayed Cécile and Raphaël in 2021, the director crafts a romantic comedy that tells us about all the unspoken things we don't know how to express and that music can help bring to the surface.

About the growth of a woman who should not feel guilty for no longer being the same girl, who chose to leave the suburbs to pursue her ambitions, the same ones her father Gérard – a lively François Rollin – seems to reproach her for, but which were nurtured precisely in his kitchen. Partir un Jour tells how, sometimes, looking back does not necessarily mean retracing a path whose steps we had forgotten, but simply savoring it for a moment before looking ahead, without being blinded by sentimentality or falling into emotional rhetoric. Because remembering and loving is right, as long as we never lose sight of who we are, who we have become, and above all, who we want to become. For a chapter in Cécile’s life full of tenderness and which, just like a song or a film, knows – and we know – that it will have to end sooner or later.