My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The Wedding Singer. Father of the Bride. Bridesmaids. Wedding Crashers. Four Weddings and a Funeral. The history of comedies set during a couple’s big day is a vast and long one, as weddings are the perfect place for all sorts of mishaps and misunderstandings to come to the fore. Quebecois director Philippe Falardeau has now added his own twist to the genre with Lovely Day.
Based on an autobiographical novel by writer Alain Farah, the film follows the travails of Alain (here played by Neil Elias) as he tries to survive his wedding ceremony and reception while various complications manifest around him. These include his divorced Lebanese parents Yolande (Hiam Abou Chedid) and Elias (Georges Khabbaz) straining to remain civil to each other despite past tendencies to fiercely bicker in public; his cousin and best man Édouard (Hassan Mahbouba) hatching grandiose real estate schemes while his own relationship hits a rough patch; and Alain’s own addiction to popping pills in times of great and terrible anxiety. Patiently (perhaps too patiently) observing it all is Alain’s bride-to-be Virginie (Rose-Marie Perreault), who tries her best to keep everything in check while Alain’s mental health spirals further and further out of control.
Utilizing a non-linear narrative structure to excavate Alain’s years as a child and teen to allow us greater insight into the bonds he’s formed in the present, Falardeau frequently finds ways to keep the audience on its toes as we wait with baited breath to see how disastrously things may go for Alain—or whether, in spite of all that goes wrong, he will manage to end the day on a high after all. To his credit, Falardeau manages to keep the suspense going for much of the nearly two-hour runtime, so wrought is this tale with chaos and unpredictability. But it never flies off the rails in spite of its narrative instabilities, as Falardeau knows when to pull back when required to keep the audience invested even when onscreen events take more ludicrous turns.
It’s a light, breezy, sweet, frequently entertaining affair with a distinct Quebecois flavour and a charmingly game cast, with all the main characters getting at least one opportunity to steal a scene. If the narrative has a major shortcoming, it’s in Perreault’s character feeling the least developed, likely because Virginie does not figure in any of the flashbacks and thus is only conceived in the present timeline. It’s a testament to Perreault’s talent that Virginie still feels like a major force in the narrative, but I wish it had given us a bit more insight into her and Alain’s relationship before they decided to tie the knot, so that she would be afforded a more fulsome backstory like Alain’s parents and Édouard have. But that aside, Lovely Day is a pleasant surprise, deconstructing and reassembling the traditional wedding comedy in ways that made me smile and laugh more than I expected. It may not quite reach the heights of some of the very best films in the genre, but it more than holds its own regardless.
Lovely Day had its world premiere at TIFF in the Special Presentations programme on September 5, 2025.
The Lonely Film Critic 