Jeanne Herry’s “Another Day,” starring Adèle Exarchopoulos as Garance, trades on the actress’ magnetic screen presence while following a Paris stage performer stuck at four liters of wine a day for 15 years. The film leans into stage-world interventions, audit
Adèle Exarchopoulos has a way of pulling you in before the story even starts—part restless curiosity. part beauty that never seems to sit still.. In Jeanne Herry’s “Another Day. ” she brings that same gravity to Garance. a flailing stage actress whose life in Paris has been governed by one rule for 15 years: four liters of wine a day.
For all the film’s melodramatic momentum, the early details land with a specific kind of ache.. Garance shares a “nothing flat” with a starving-artist boyfriend who doesn’t care if she lives or dies—until the moment abortion enters the picture.. She also works as part of a theater company entertaining small children with “silly. costumey performances. ” even as her drinking remains barely concealable to everyone around her. including her sister (Mathilde Roehrich). who is in and out of cancer treatment.
The members of her theater troupe try to help, but not in a straight line.. Their concern comes with practical support. including finding another apartment she’ll “probably not be able to hold once her relationship sours.” Garance. meanwhile. is described as the kind of drunk who can be “really. really fun for a night out”—right up until she wakes at the end of the bus line without knowing who or where she is. tights ripped.
and forced to walk home in a fog of shame.. The film gives those episodes bite: she botches her way through a lecture to schoolchildren about acting while still in last night’s clothes. hair. and makeup.. Later. she shows up to an audition in which casting agents are astonished she’s gone “Method” for the job they want—playing a drug-addled prostitute—despite the fact that Garance never knew the lines. and didn’t even see the email with
the PDF.
Even her curiosity about queer life can’t pull her out of the wreckage.. Garance falls for her hairdresser’s friend Pauline (Sara Giraudeau). a basically teetotaling artist who recognizes the mess she may be walking into but “adores Garance anyway.” The script also flirts with viewers’ expectations for Exarchopoulos in a queer role—expectations shaped by the career-changing visibility that came from Abdellatif Kechiche’s “Blue Is the Warmest Color. ” after which the actress was widely associated with that kind of revelation.. But “Another Day,” as framed here, never takes viewers inside the bedroom for anything exploitative.
Where the film starts to strain is in how it sustains the core premise.. Garance is still hard-boozing 90 minutes in. and the story’s requirement—an intervention that leaves her fully without a job—pushes her into terror. described as a feeling like “a plane will crash on me.” The article raises the question of whether that dread is delirium tremens as detox starts to set in. then follows Garance through repeated falls and getting up again—“falls down. gets up. falls again. and again. but then finally one more time.” After that. the movie’s direction turns maudlin and. in this telling. “sanctimonious” about her sudden redemption.
One line keeps tugging at the film’s moving parts: Garance’s drinking is measured with brutal consistency—four liters a day for 15 years—then later quantified by a doctor as “an average of 19 drinks every 24 hours. ” and that unbroken emphasis on her sobriety level is repeatedly tied to how the story frames everything else. from auditions she never readied for to her sense of safety collapsing during detox.
There are also the choices of time and setting.. “Another Day” is set circa the dawn of COVID. where masks and quarantine come into play—an element that. for many viewers at the time. would have made relapses feel close at hand. too tempting. too reachable. too easily hidden.. The film’s compassion for Garance is described as obvious. but the critique here argues that the character is left with little interior detail beyond alcohol consumption. turning her into a figure of “help me. but don’t help me.”
Still, the piece is clear about where its admiration lands: Exarchopoulos is “a force.” The verdict concludes with a grade of C, and the parting instruction is blunt—“Hire her and get out of her way.”
“Another Day” premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival and is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
Adèle Exarchopoulos Another Day Jeanne Herry Garance alcoholism drama Cannes Film Festival 2026 Mathilde Roehrich Sara Giraudeau COVID-era film