You’ve likely seen many stories like Jeanne Herry’s “Garance” (“Another Day”), and you’re likely to see many more in years to come. A tender yet punishing look at how our addictions become our prisons, even as they assuage pain, it will likely strike a chord for those who are intimately familiar with the protagonists’ addiction to alcohol or who have friends or family who struggle.
It’s competently made and well-acted thanks to a blistering performance from Adèle Exarchopoulos, who perfectly embodies the pessimism and stubbornness of thinking you can give up a substance that you feel you’ve formed your soul around, but it doesn’t have enough of a visual or thematic identity to differentiate it from stories of a similar kind. That doesn’t make it without recommendation, but for those coming in expecting something narratively or formally more daring for this Main Competition title, you’ll likely be left wanting. Other films that have
been half as long have achieved more.
To give credit where it’s due, even if the arc of Exarchopoulos’ protagonist, Garance, may be familiar, Herry is content with not ruminating on the recurring set of images we’d expect from an addiction drama. There’s a way that films that are about recovery ironically glorify the spiral while sanitizing the recovery. It’s not hard to recall scenes on screen of people partying and letting themselves indulge in intoxicating excess; if the majority of the film’s runtime is dedicated to this carnal recreation and the portion where a character “cleans up” is expedited, it showcases the priorities of the filmmakers.
What stays in our minds isn’t the “getting better” of it all but the “getting worse.” While Herry allows herself the grace of a couple of throbbing nightclub and house party scenes (colorful enough but not captured with the immersion of the ones in say, “Club Kid”), you can tell where her priorities lie: showcasing the grueling, soul-sucking aftermath of losing control.
Most of the film’s runtime is dedicated to seeing Garance, a young actress, just after she’s woken up from a hangover. Having abused alcohol for many years, she’s comfortable making a bed out of things that should never have been vessels for our rest, from grimy bathtubs to empty buses. She wrestles with the dual prongs of anxiety and disappointment, which dangerously feed into each other. She wishes she could have better starring roles, and this frustration makes her
anxious. Though she’s encouraged by her sister, various partners – including a new lover in her life, Pauline (Sara Giraudeau) – her solace is at the bottom of a glass of white wine, and she’d have everyone in her life convinced that she’s the world’s first functioning alcoholic.
Rather than opt for histrionic depictions of her crash-out, Herry’s script focuses on the subtler yet more insidious ways her addiction manifests, namely in her chronic excuse-making. Whenever Garance is late or forgetful, she blames it on the circumstances of the outside world: a broken bus, bad traffic, and the like. The reality is that she can’t move through the world without alcohol, but she’s so gripped by her dependence that she becomes its biggest defender.
Garance thrives the most when making fabrication; she delivers the lie with such ease and confidence that the people who don’t know her accept her excuses without a second thought. Her confidence reveals the dark side of her need: She can’t envision a world where alcohol is not a part of her life. She’ll entertain a harm-reduction model; hell, she might settle for just two glasses of wine at night instead of her usual four, but damn anyone who suggests she might try to even
think of cold-quitting. Indeed, death seems more tenable than course correction.
Of course, there comes a point where the disparity between the lies Garance tells herself and the consequences of actions close in, and that’s when the film is at its most heartwrenching and basic. It’s difficult and relatable to watch Garance admit she isn’t rock bottom because her circumstances don’t mirror the severity of the most extreme cases. Arguably, the lack of flashiness around her addiction is even more dangerous, and through the people in her life, she’s forced to reckon with the false peace she’s made.
It can be a bit circuitous to witness, though, as the film essentially amounts to a world tour of sorts for her as she goes from person to person in her life who tells her the same thing.
I’m not one to champion the English title over the director’s original vision, but in the case of “Garance” (Another Day)” I may make an exception. There’s a scene that neatly summarizes the film as a whole, where Garance is told that her addiction has done such damage to her liver that if she doesn’t immediately quit, she risks an early grave. “It has to be now,” a medical professional says, deconstructing her fallacy that she can just start a couple of days later.
The film’s English title is a powerful reminder of this truth. To think about the process of recovery can be debilitating because it’s such an unknown promise compared to the tangible reality where one is ruled by their addictions. It’s always easier to hide in the dawn of tomorrow. As “Garance (Another Day)” shows, though, the key isn’t to enforce linearity upon our journeys of growth but to understand that it’s a journey to be taken one day at a time.
