Videovista have my review of Remi Bezancon’s Le Premier Jour Du Reste De Ta Vie.
Well directed, the film also employs quite a neat structural trick of focusing only upon five key days in the lives of a middle-class French family. However, despite the odd nice moment, The First Day of the Rest of your Life is an astoundingly unoriginal film dealing only in the boldest and most familiar of cinematic emotions. Dreadful.
Ruthless Culture 
Quite! If I remember correctly, the film even breaks its own rule and resorts to flashbacks outside of the five ‘first days’ in the title. An especial shame, because that formal constraint would – if adhered to – be pretty much the only thing the film had going for it. So no redeeming features at all, really.
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Good point on the flashbacks… So yes, it also cheats.
Visually, the film is very reminiscent of the French-Canadian film C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) with its music video visuals and heavy reliance upon recognisable music to dictate mood but C.R.A.Z.Y. did at least deal with characters and situations that were bit less clicheed.
http://www.videovista.net/reviews/aug06/crazy.html
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[…] of French drama can be. In fact, The Father of My Children is the perfect antidote to films like The First Day of the Rest of Your Life (2008) whose depiction of human emotion and psychology are not only clicheed and generic but […]
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