Dramedy • NR • 119 Minutes • 2025
I’ve only attended weddings as a guest, so when it comes to the planning, the anxiety, the stress of it all, I merely get to sit back, enjoy the open bar (don’t make your guests pay for drinks at your wedding) and eat the catered food with a drunken smile on my face. That said, I’m more than positive that the active planning stages of a wedding are probably less than enjoyable, with all the family politics on both sides, confronting your future and saying goodbye to your past; maybe with judgement, maybe without, but having everything bubble to the surface until the moment of release when the special couple kiss and the party begins. This is what Philippe Falardeau’s wedding dramedy Lovely Day, adapted from the novel Mille secrets mille dangers written by Alain Farah, explores.
Author of the book and co-writer Alain Farah brings his fictionalized version of himself to the screen, with Alain Farah played by Neil Elias and Virginie played by Rose-Marie Perreault, and their lead up to their wedding ceremony, where divorced family members and past anxieties take over Alain and reintroduces an old childhood illness that kills the pleasure of his special day.
I love it when there are clear moments in which you can tell that the filmmaker has thought long and hard about what they want their film to do. Planning out the tone, the style, and the aspect ratio are all deliberate choices to build a film that has its own unique voice and perspective of the story it’s attempting to tell. When creating a film that takes place in a different time in the character’s life, storylines and plots can get tangled and muddled unless properly orienting the audience. What this film does to a tee is just that; using wedding invitations as transition markers and mirroring the match-cutting of old and young versions of the characters through only action is an incredibly effective way to tell a non-linear story. Where the film stalls, however, mostly lies with the script itself and its unbelievably slow pace, with scenes dragging on and on, many of which make their point but continue to push the same ideas into the next scene until character reactions become predictable.
Much of this film relies on Alain’s anxiety as an engine of conflict and while much of his anxieties are explored through flashbacks one of the threads I would like to pull on are Alain’s parents, and the wonderful performances given by Hiam Abou Chedid as Yolande and Georges Khabbaz as Elias, a Lebanese divorced couple that Alain constantly recalls during his tribulations before and during the wedding, a worry that maybe his own marriage will suffer the same rupture as his parents. While other anxieties exist and will remain spoiler-free, it’s the relationships explored through Alain that give the audience the best insight into his character, knowing it may not be one thing that has caused him to act this way, but a chain reaction of events that almost exist in one single event horizon, coalescing into panic attacks. That sounds like a lot to put on an actor’s shoulders, but with a standout performance from Neil Elias’s portrayal of Alain, it’s done effortlessly.
I think a true test of a great actor is what they can convey through their eyes and body language alone. For its nearly two-hour runtime, I could have muted the film, watched it as a silent movie and still understood what Neil Elias was emoting. It unfortunately feels like a classical style of acting that has been replaced with a new yardstick measuring who can scream, yell, and flail around the most, hoping for their Oscar-bait scenes to win them a prestigious award. However, I would argue that it’s these kinds of quiet, uncomfortable performances that are the real home runs and carry a lot more impactful emotion in them. And who can ever forget the bride on their wedding day? Although this film is one on a short list of wedding films that feature the groom instead of the bride, Rose-Marie Perreault’s Virginie gives a great performance as the bride-to-be, given how little she had to work with. As a flat character, we only see her through Alain’s perspective, but she still manages to put together a believable performance across from Neil Elias.
Although the performances are what I would consider the main attraction of this film, the stylistic choices of having the film partially shot in what is seemingly becoming a Canadian filmmaking standard of 4:3 aspect ratio was a great addition for the claustrophobic framing of the film. As we are thrust back in time to Alain’s childhood, the aspect ratio opens up to widescreen, presenting a more hopeful and less apprehensive outlook on Alain’s anxieties.
A serious misstep in Lovely Day is how slow the film feels, and getting past it may be tough for many people, but there is so much this film offers within its performances and interwoven story that it’s a shame the film’s pacing drags it down from what could have been a great film to just an above-average film. That said, the pacing might not bother everyone, and to those people who are not bothered by a slower film, I would suggest an attempt to experience the carefully crafted characters and their dynamic with each other, infused with some great artistic choices and a third act that finds its footing with its humour and finishes with its final emotional beats.
Lovely Day (Mille secrets mille dangers) is nominated for six Canadian Screen Awards.
Where to Watch
Lovely Day was viewed on Crave
Also worth checking: CBC Gem (often carries Canadian titles not listed elsewhere).
about the author
Merrick Gajdics is founder, publisher and editor of The Canadian Film Reviewer.