Leave One Day, which just opened in theaters around Israel, is a slight but charming French musical drama about a chef, and it will be best appreciated by fans of Gallic pop music.
It’s more than a little strange that Leave One Day, the feature film directorial debut of Amelie Bonnin, was the opening-night film at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025, arguably the most coveted screening slot in the entire film world.
Other than mixing in occasional songs in which the characters express their thoughts in a nice, low-key way as they cook, argue, or walk, there is nothing original about it.
The central dilemma facing the heroine, Cecile (Juliette Armanet), will certainly not be novel to viewers of the series The Bear. That show is about a neurotic chef, Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), who leaves his top spot at one of the world’s fanciest restaurants to take over his family’s greasy-spoon in Chicago after his brother’s death – and turns it into a Michelin-star worthy fine-dining establishment.
Cecile, a recent winner of France’s Top Chef competition, is about to open a Parisian fine-dining establishment with her longtime boyfriend, Sofiane (Tewfik Jallab), and learns she is pregnant in the opening scene, and then gets a call that her father has had a third heart attack.
She keeps the pregnancy to herself and wants to ignore the news about her father and concentrate her perfectionistic drive on creating the ideal signature dish for their restaurant, the one that people will share pictures of on Instagram.
But Sofiane urges her to go visit her parents, knowing she hasn’t seen them in over a year, and so she heads off to the rural truck stop where they run what seems like a surprisingly good restaurant, particularly if you compare it to truck stops in America.
Father won’t stop cooking, mother wants to travel
Her stubborn, workaholic father (Francois Rollin), from whom she learned the value of placing one’s restaurant before one’s personal life, refuses to stop cooking, even though he can barely stand. He is also nursing a grudge against her for the disparaging remarks she made about the family restaurant and their town on the TV competition.
Her mother (Dominique Blanc), more of a live-and-let-live type, dreams of shutting down the eatery and traveling to Italy in an RV before it’s too late.
As Cecile copes with her exasperating father and takes charge of the restaurant, she meets up with her old high-school buddies and falls back into a flirtation with Raphael (Bastien Bouillon). He’s a slightly goofy guy she had a crush on and was best friends with when they were teens, but who ignored her for sexier girls and who now works as a mechanic and still rides his motorcycle.
Just about everyone has someone in their past like Raphael, and it’s clear why Cecile still cares about him. She faces relatable dilemmas on several fronts: Which guy? Which restaurant? And what about the baby?
Obviously, the storyline is quite familiar, and the best moments are the songs, which include covers of both relatively recent hits, such as Stromae’s Alors on danse, and classics, such as Dalida and Alain Delon’s Paroles… Paroles…
The lead actress, Juliette Armanent, is an appealing singer and actress, and makes you believe in Cecile’s Carmy Berzatto-like devotion to her restaurant, as well as her longing for the guy who takes her back to her younger, more carefree days.
Having set the plot in motion, I felt as if Bonnin lost interest midway and the intensity of the opening scenes quickly faded. But watching this movie may help you get into the mood for the latest Eurovision Song Contest, which is coming up in mid-May, and which features a song, “Michelle,” sung mainly in French by Israel’s contestant, Noam Bettan. And you may seek out the songs on the soundtrack after the movie ends.
Source:
www.jpost.com
