The opening gala of Cannes can be such a gamble: a very exposed festival slot which few films need or want, and whose occupants so often turn out to be the squawking overfed turkeys of the big screen. Such a one, sadly, is this listless and supercilious musical – ostensibly on the theme of heartwarming home town values – which flatlines like a hedgehog run over by an 18-wheeler the moment the female lead opens her mouth to sing one of the film’s many terrible songs.
Cécile (played by French singer Juliette Armanet) is about to open a restaurant in the big city having recently won a top-rated TV cooking show, and she is dating her colleague Sofiane (Tewfik Jallab). But when she hears that her adorable, exasperating old dad Gérard (François Rollin) has had a heart attack, brought on by the strain of running the family’s truck-stop cafe out in the boondocks with Cécile’s mum Fanfan (Dominique Blanc), she realises she must (naturally) put her shallow workaholic lifestyle on hold to go and see him. But of course she runs into her twinkly-eyed ex-boyfriend from the old neighbourhood; this is Raph (Bastien Bouillon), whose heart broke when she just left one day – and what makes it all complicated is that she’s pregnant.
