A pocket-sized musical with achievements of French pop

French cinema maintains a particularly close relationship with its musical stars. From Juliette Gréco to Benjamin Biolay, many musicians have stepped in front of the camera in projects that don't appear to be mere promotional vehicles, but rather natural extensions of their artistic aspirations. One of the most recent additions to this tradition is Juliette Armanet, a singer who seems to have developed a taste for acting in recent years, and who finds in Choosing my life The intersection of their talents.

In Amélie Bonnin's film, Armanet plays Cécile, a cook in the midst of a midlife crisis (the imminent opening of her restaurant is compounded by the news of an unplanned pregnancy) who returns to her hometown to visit her parents. She will rediscover friends, memories… and also songs, since the characters in this story have a tendency to sing to project sorrows and joys, using the great hits of French-language pop as amulets that form part of a memory that is both personal and collective.

OFThen they danced, of Stromae, in To start a daywhich gives the film its original title and which was popularized by the boy band In 2Be3, the musical pieces parade through the fiction without fanfare, linking with the dialogues and trying to find the middle ground between naturalness and artifice (thus moving away from the playback sublimated by Alain Resnais in Donde connaît la chansonThe musical staging is atypical, but it clashes with a lazy dramatic writing style, which leaves Choosing my life in a rather uninspiring no man's land.