CANNES – If you suffer from any sort of addiction – drugs, alcohol, or otherwise – the goal is to remain sober for one more day. For the Garance, our heroine at the center of Jeanne Herry’s directorial effort, “Another Day,” that may mean something different altogether: another day of drinking. Another day of avoiding the obvious. And in many ways, despite Adèle Exarchopoulos‘ captivating performance, the obvious permeates through this 2026 Cannes Film Festival selection.
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Set over eight years, although you’d only know that from the movie’s official synopsis, “Another Day” makes it clear almost immediately that the initially twenty-something Garance (Exarchopoulos) knows she’s an alcoholic. She blatantly admits it to friends. It seems off the cuff, though at first. Newfound friends and colleagues assume she’s joking, but at this age, she’s, as a friend puts it, “dumb and blunt.”
Judging by Garance’s seemingly suburban naivety to the artistic world of Paris, that’s certainly the case (and a major plot hole). Garance has a lot of growing up to do, but she’s also a talented actor. A junior member of a Parisian theater group, she has off-stage responsibilities in a touring play, such as assisting a co-star in a costume change or ringing a bell in the background. And despite her almost nightly partying, her addiction never seems to affect her work. She’s a functioning alcoholic until she’s not.
Over the course of several years, she drops boyfriends, changes apartments multiple times, and finally finds a chosen family of friends who don’t judge her for binge drinking. I mean, she’s rarely messy, right? And the consequences don’t seem to add up to much. That is, until the theater group decides to attempt an intervention (a mild one at that), where she’s essentially let go. She may never miss a show. She may always know her lines, but her peers can’t put up with the rest. It’s not rock bottom, though. In fact, rock bottom never truly comes.
The one sounding board who tries to warn Garance is her younger sister (Mathilde Roehrich). She’s got her own problems, however, being diagnosed with leukemia while pregnant. That is just one of a slew of dramatic conflicts and timestamps in Garance’s life that Herry drops in rapid succession. For a good portion of the film, it’s almost dizzying. So much so that it takes a moment to realize her subject’s journey is not limited to a set period (COVID rearing its ugly head is a jarring sign after the preceding segments of the film felt as though they could occur yesterday).
Garance’s only lifeline is her unexpected romance with stage production artist Pauline (Sara Giraudeau, quite good). A woman who opens up a new world to Grace while also enabling Grace’s need to drink up to 14 glasses of wine a week. Her justification, she thought her own chance at love was truly over, which works mostly thanks to Giraudeau’s performance. One of Herry’s strengths is grounding this romance enough that you believe Pauline would leave the love of her life to her own, tragic fate.
As “Another Day” winds down, the weight of throwing almost everything against the wall, hoping it will stick, is a bit too much for the movie to bear. Despite her best efforts and avoiding melodramatic (if not often realistic) rock bottom moments, Herry cannot avoid treading into television movie of the week territory. All while a fiercely committed Exarchopoulos does her best to overcome the shackles of the genre. To be fair, everyone’s hearts are in the right place. That’s obvious. And someone may see themselves in this scenario and begin a road to recovery, but the journey may have been more impactful without needing every moment of Grace’s life depicted on screen. It’s simply too much. [C-]
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