A wedding as an act of love. One that brings two families together, completely different, but each member there to celebrate one couple. One that finds one of these families, the Puig family, reunited, missing the father who has been exiled from the family and festivities. A wedding that hopes to heal past wounds. This is Orange-Flavoured Wedding, Christophe Honoré’s ensemble drama set in 1978 Nantes, France. What begins as a quirky ensemble piece quickly becomes a much deeper hitting drama about love, the past, and a family’s role in the journey to healing from trauma.

The Puig family has come together to witness the marriage of brother Jacques and his fiancee Martine. With the family’s matriarch, her seven children spend the evening moving from church to dinner to dance, as they each work through past traumas and future anxieties, surrounded by the absence of their abusive father, who has been exiled from the family and not invited to the wedding.

The film opens in the car, with just bride Martine and her mother. Her mother is expressing her own anxieties about Martine’s future, and the man and family into which she has chosen to marry. Said family of the groom is late, exuberant, and troubled, and her mother questions if this is something she is prepared to spend the rest of he life in. Along with Martine’s wedding, this opening sets the scene for the rest of the film, as Martine is warned about what she is getting herself into as we, too, are introduced to the Puig family through the mother-in-law, similarly shedding a light on what we may be in for during the next 2 hours.

As we are introduced to each sibling, it quickly becomes clear that this is not just some ensemble drama-comedy of a bumbling family. Instead it is a much deeper study into trauma, mental health, and familial love with much more stakes than I was expecting. Take, Claudie, played by Adèle Exarchopoulos, who has been institutionalized to receive help for her mental health after a separation from her partner. Or Annie, who is leaving her husband in Italy to return with the children to France. Or Dominique, who is introduced as organized one of the bunch, but has clear issues with abuse once he begins to drink.

With each character built with their own set of past trauma and issues, they all seem to stem from pain inflicted by their father. What Honoré does so well with this film is never dwelling on the past, while simultaneously making it clear that each family member is where they are because of it. We are given just enough information about their past and stories that we can sympathize, but it never dwells too much on it. Instead, it deeply looks at how their trauma can impact their experience on this one specific night, the marriage of one of the brothers, to give us an idea of how they have each spent the days of the rest of their lives before.

With this narrative device of only spending one night with the characters, Honoré also uses time in a very unique way. As we are given glimpses into the futures of the characters we have come to care so deelpy for, these become some of the most devastating scenes in the film, despite having only spent one night with the family.

The film overall also feels very authentic. The people look like normal people, their costumes and hairstyles truly do place us in 1970s France, and the way the siblings speak to each other comes off as very realistic, like I am witnessing a real family coming together to celebrate love while also processing past traumas.

Each player in the film gives such a grounded performance, as though they each really understand their character’s past. The characters are written in a way that they really balance each other out, and you never become fatigued from watching too many strong personalities battle it out on the screen, even though each of the 7 siblings most definitely has their own strong quirks and presence on screen.

Christophe Honoré’s Orange-Flavoured Wedding was a gem of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. It looks deeply into a family at a wedding, and explores how, and if, love can heal the wounds of the past through exceptional character work and a deeply moving story.

Orange-Flavoured Wedding was screened at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. Image courtesy of The PR Factory.