Leaving one day: an enchanted nugget (critic)

From her short cesarized, Amélie Bonnin pulled a long that opens Cannes. A film happiness on a thirties who confronts his past to reinvent himself. Juliette Armanet makes flamboyant debut there.

It is one of those success stories that no one could have anticipated. A first short which gave birth to a first long, invited to open Cannes. Unheard of in the history of the festival! So a flashback is essential. Until 2022, date of presentation of Go on a day – The court at the Clermont festival. Amélie Bonnin stages the return to her hometown of a thirties (Bastien Bouillon) Mounted in Paris to become a writer and his reunion with a former classmate (Juliette Armanet). The film leaves with the public prize, the start of a collection of trophies therefore concluded with a César. And an impulse that will make you want to develop this long story. By taking up the principle of songs which extend the dialogues as in We know the song, Interpreted here by the actors. But by interverting the sex of the characters.

In Go on a day – Long, it is Cécile, Cheffe cook about to open her first gastro in Paris who returns to the village of her childhood following the infarction of her father (François Rollin, upsetting like the wonderful Dominique Blanc who plays his wife), patron of a restaurant and who will recover Raphaël, her youthful love. By changing her format, Amélie Bonnin has lost none of the beauty of the gaze she takes on the province, increasingly scrutinized by French cinema but rarely with this empathy. Like the playlist stripped of all snobbery of her film, from Dalida to 2 Be 3 via Benabar or Nougaro …

But by reversing the characters, Amélie Bonnin, signs here a magnificent portrait of a woman who discovers the need to confront the non-saying of the past (in love, family) to go ahead and reinvent themselves. And each time she finds the right tone to orchestrate these face- in the face of Rudes (the father-daughter report damaged by accumulated misunderstandings), radiant (the return to the ice of their youth of Cécile and Raphaël) or hurtful (when Cécile discovers that Raphaël is married and dad).

Without a cummy store, not denying anything from the ditch that can widen when you move away from where you grew up, Amélie Bonnin touches the heart directly. While magnifying the bright part of Bastien Bouillon and revealing the immense talent of actress of Juliette Armanet, whose expressive face says more than a thousand words. A film happiness!

By Amélie Bonnin. With Juliette Armanet, Bastien Bouillon, François Rollin… Duration 1h35. Release on May 13, 2025