Competition Films at LIFF 2025: That Summer in Paris – Review

That Summer in Paris 01 LE RENDEZ VOUS DE L ETE – Main Still – Blandine Madec – @ 2024 Comme des Cinemas. Image Credit: Leeds International Film Festival.

‘That Summer In Paris’ is a vibrant and lyrical debut from Valentine Cadic, framing a quiet personal awakening against the spectacle and fanfare of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

The film opens in a blaze of colour. Quick-cut snapshots capture a city alive with anticipation: crowds waving flags, torch bearers crossing the Seine, giant outdoor screens beaming athletic glory across the boulevards. It’s a dazzling, immersive introduction that contrasts sharply with the stillness at the story’s centre.

Among the throng stands Blandine (Blandine Madec), a piano teacher from Normandy. She has come to Paris to watch her sporting idol, swimmer Beryl Gastaldello, compete and to reconnect with her estranged half-sister Julie (India Hair) and her niece Alma (Lou Deleuze). But things never go quite as planned. Her oversized rucksack keeps her from entering Olympic venues. Her hostel bunk is cramped and noisy; and, in a darkly comic twist, she’s told she must leave because she has just turned thirty and no longer qualifies for the “18–30s” rule.

That Summer in Paris 08 LE RENDEZ VOUS DE L ETE – Still – Blandine Madec – @ 2024 Comme des Cinemas – Cinq de Trefle Productions. Image Credit Leeds International Film Festival.

Blandine is a quietly striking figure as she drifts through a city both euphoric and indifferent to her. As she reconnects with Julie after a decade apart, she finds greater ease with her eight-year-old niece than with the adults around her. Through their gentle, shared moments, we glimpse fragments of Blandine’s life: a recent breakup with an unseen lover, Caroline, and a growing acceptance of solitude and independence. 

Around Blandine, conversations about the hidden cost of the Olympics – the forced removal of homeless people, the money poured into a river still too polluted to host events – provide an unspoken counterpoint. Cadic contrasts the city’s jubilant self-image with its quiet exclusions, mirroring Blandine’s own sense of alienation amid the noise.

That Summer in Paris 02 LE RENDEZ VOUS DE L ETE – Still – Blandine Madec-India Hair-Lou Deleuze – @ 2024 Comme des Cinemas – Cinq de Trefle Productions. Image Credit: Leeds International Film Festival.

Yet ‘That Summer in Paris’ is far from bleak. In its small, luminous scenes, Cadic captures moments such as a stifling hot night sleeping together on the balcony of Julie’s apartment and a birthday picnic in the park. Together, these vignettes find tenderness, humour, and resilience amid the chaos.

Wistful yet unsentimental, the film is a portrait of a woman, and a city, caught between celebration and self-reflection. A quietly confident debut that lingers long after the crowds have gone home.