Cannes 2025 is off to a Strange Start with "Partir Un Jour."

Yesterday marked the official start of the world's most prestigious film festival, The Cannes International Film Festival in southern France. For the next two weeks some of the year's most hotly anticipated films will be screened for the very first time, including works from Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Julia Ducournau and more. Last night, audiences queued up for hours and celebrities walked the red carpet all to see the festival officially kick off at the Grand Lumière Theater. This year's opening film was the french feature, Partir Un Jour (Leave One Day), a film that unfortunately is following the trend of Cannes openers with a vague premises and meandering execution,

Partir Un Jour is a French comedy musical by director, Amélie Bonnin. It follows the life of Cécile, a successful Parisian chef who returns to her hometown after learning of her father's recent health issues. While home, she reunites with old friends, bickers with parents, and is forced to re-examine her life. It's a story with a good balance of themes both personal and universal. The movie features performances by Juliette Armanet, Bastien Bouillon, Tewfik Jallab, and François Rollin.

What sets this film apart is the music. It's far from the musicals we're used to seeing on screen, the songs are never more than two minutes long, and they range from expositional to pop songs, they also range in terms of success. A lot of the singing feels out of place because the central plot is very down-to-earth and non-cinematic. There's no real reason for Partir Un Jour to be a musical, it sets the film apart arguably for the worse.

The film is very well shot and acted, the lighting is gorgeous and overall, it looks like a very competent project, aesthetically. Everything done in front of the camera is decent, it's the writing that brings the movie down significantly. By the end the story feels unfinished, with a bunch of loose ends to be tied but, but as an audience, I didn't care to see them solved. As disappointed as I am to say, I briefly dozed off in the third act of Partir Un Jour, which in a way is the biggest sin of all. Unfortunately, these negative sentiments about the film seem to be the dominant opinion at the moment. Reviews from the film are already in from critics around the world, including one from Robbie Collin of the Daily Telegraph who described the film as "such a haplessly cobbled fiasco that it could almost serve as a sort of Viking funeral for the entire musical genre, which it sends bobbing off into the night as it burns to a crisp."

The film is reminiscent of last year's opening film, Le Deuxième Acte (The Second Act) by Quentin Dupieux. As in, a movie that is understated, unorthodox, and above all: undeniably French. But despite being out for less than twenty four hours, it's clear that The Second Act is the preferred opener between the two. In a critique that may seem unnecessarily brutal, Partir Un Jour reads like a low budget Emilia Perez with no star power.

But while the opening film this year was a disappointment, that doesn't mean all hope is lost for Cannes this year. For the next two weeks the Cannes will see the release of various films from some of the world's top directors, writers, and producers. So with that, we remain optimistic, but it's safe to say that this year's Cannes opener is one you can skip.