There is something seductive in Amélie Bonnin’s attempt to craft a dramedy that uses the musical as an emotional vehicle. In Leave One Day, her debut feature, the director expands the premise of her César-winning short into a more ambitious format, retaining the blend of nostalgia, family reunions, and personal conflicts. But what felt endearing and effective in a short piece here ends up dissolving into a formula that tries to be luminous, yet rarely truly moves.

The story revolves around Cécile, a renowned chef about to open her first restaurant, who, after receiving an unexpected call, is forced to return to the village where she grew up. Her return sets off a series of encounters and misencounters with her past: a sick father, a resigned mother, an unresolved teenage love, and an unwanted pregnancy. Layered into all this is a latent class tension that runs throughout the film, expressed both in the dialogues and in the contrast between haute cuisine and the old family inn’s menu. The problem with Leave One Day doesn’t lie so much in what it tells, but in how it tells it. Despite having all the ingredients for an intimate and potentially powerful drama, the film leans on an overly conventional structure and relies too heavily on clichés. Every revelation, every emotional turn, feels anticipated, as if the film were afraid to risk discomfort or to complicate its characters’ emotions beyond what’s expected.

The use of musical numbers, which could have served as a powerful tool to delve into the characters’ subjectivity, mostly feels forced. The songs appear at arbitrary moments, interrupting scenes without clear narrative justification. Rather than adding layers of meaning, many of these musical interludes end up functioning as decorative elements, relying on the nostalgic effect of French or international pop hits. The choice of songs doesn’t always match the tone of the scene, and the fact that several of the performers don’t seem particularly comfortable singing heightens the sense of artificiality. Only near the end, with a melancholic reinterpretation of “Partir un jour,” does the musical element find a moment of authenticity that holds its weight. The film tries to draw a parallel between Cécile’s emotional journey and her reconciliation with her roots, but it does so from an overly gentle perspective. The conflict with her father, who represents a way of life she seems to have abandoned in shame, is introduced but never explored in depth. Some scenes suggest deeper wounds, but the narrative chooses to smooth everything over with a too-quick redemption, rather than embracing ambiguity or discomfort. This lack of depth is also reflected in the treatment of the pregnancy and Cécile’s relationship with her partner—topics that could have led to more complex and less complacent narrative decisions.

There are occasional moments that do work. A sequence at a roller-skating rink, where the characters reenact a scene from their adolescence, stands out for its energy and for a playful visual design that breaks with the monotony of the rest of the film. The film also benefits from its depiction of certain rural spaces, with their outdated bars, their memories frozen in time, and their inhabitants caught between resignation and affection. Bonnin shows sensitivity in capturing these details, even if she doesn’t always manage to weave them into a coherent whole. Leave One Day is a well-intentioned film, but too restrained. It wants to say many things about return, family lineage, the right to choose, and social class, but rarely allows itself to explore them in depth.