In my experience, films about the Arab diaspora in the Western world are hard to come by. And films about Middle Easterners in the West that don’t revolve around their position as outliers in their surroundings, that center their human interpersonal relationships while using their cultural background as the canvas for it, have been downright impossible to find.
That is, until “Lovely Day,” a film adaptation of Alain Farah’s novel “Mille Secrets Mille Dangers.” Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival 2025, the film follows the character Alain (Neil Elias Abdelwahab, “Le trip à trois”) on the day of his wedding, as his anxiety takes him back in time through his worst moments. Attempting to bridge his Lebanese-Egyptian family’s superstitions with his bride’s Quebecois sensibilities, he trips on his own shoelaces. He bends over backwards to please his parents and impress his fiancée, knowing their desires are completely at odds, which ultimately frays his relationship to them both. He can’t give himself fully to either of them, so he breaks apart.
Canadian director Philippe Falardeau (“The Good Lie”) sat down with The Michigan Daily to discuss adapting the book for the screen, blending an accurate portrayal of the Arab diaspora in Quebec and what it means to tell this story.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
The Michigan Daily: One of the hardest-hitting aspects of the film was the relationship between Alain and his many blended cultures. How did you find the balance between portraying him as a Quebecois Canadian and someone with Arab heritage, knowing that it’s something many people have a hard time coming to terms with in the diaspora?
Philippe Falardeau: This is something very interesting because I didn’t have any margin for faux pas. You can’t just make caricatures of things that happen in communities that are not necessarily your own. I’ve done films with refugees and immigrants — “The Good Lie” and “Monsieur Lazhar.” This time, it was different, because Alain is second-generation. We haven’t seen that a lot in Quebec cinema. We’ve seen more and more, thankfully, films about refugees and immigrants, but not about the children of immigrants. It becomes an identity quest, and it’s not so disconnected from his anxiety problem. Of course, he has his own childhood reason for being an anxious man, but it’s very much linked to his situation as a Quebecer who wants to just be this normal kid, but he’s constantly reminded of his parents’ past.
In the book, it’s even more prevalent. But I wanted to make this the canvas of the film, not the subject. So when we see his mother talking about the evil eye, a lot of people, not just from the Lebanese community who identify themselves in the movie, know that this is not just a joke. This is serious stuff. Their relationship with religion — are you a Melkite, are you a Maronite, are you a Muslim? It’s very important. You have to treat this seriously. In the film, this must be linked with creating more anxiety. When Alain is finally released from his demons, he is also coming to terms with the fact that he is very much part of his parents’ big story. He cannot deny his ancestry, but he can also take pride in being who he is.
It was important, also, for me to cast actors who look the part and have, in their own lives, a real link to immigrant (backgrounds). They’re both sons of immigrants who have a Quebec accent — because the characters are born here, they did not immigrate here.
TMD: How were you able to portray his anxiety — a marker of the generational trauma that he, as a second-generation immigrant, has to deal with? How were you able to adapt it from the novel and make sure that the audience could get inside his head? What was the most difficult part of that process?
PF: Filming anxiety is difficult in itself because it’s abstract. Yes, you can put an actor in front of a mirror gobbling pills all the time, but that becomes redundant. You can have an actor act super anxious like Woody Allen, but that also has limits. So, you have to find other ways of conveying that. I thought that the structure of the film could put the audience in a situation where they become hyper-vigilant and ask, “Wait a minute, why is he acting like that? Why is he so mad? What has he done?”
Then, you realize as the film progresses that there are things from the past that rise to the surface. The pressure from the parents for the marriage, for the big wedding, for not eating beans, even the pressure from the father on him as a kid saying, “never talk about your illness.” I was not brought up in that environment. I share the same illness as him and Alain, and I share it with my real mother, and it was never a taboo. But, it was a taboo in his family because of the evil eye. And, knowing that’s not necessarily in the book, I said to Alain Farah, the author, “we need to put this in the film — it’s part of what second-generation immigrants live with.”
TMD: The ways in which Alain acts out because of his anxiety is something that pulls the audience back from the character. But we’re still compelled by him, we’re rooting for him. How did you balance making sure that he’s a complex character who can do bad things while ensuring that the audience is still able to connect with him?
PF: You need payoffs. If the payoff isn’t there, you’re in trouble. I think the payoff comes in bits and pieces. At the middle of the film, it starts being funnier. Once you get inside the marriage, the ceremony, and you see what happens and you laugh, you start sympathizing with, at least, the bride and, by extension, the groom. Then, you start, the second time he comes out during his father’s speech, knowing why. He’s not necessarily afraid of an old high-school classmate showing up. He feels guilty for what he did to him when he was young. He probably feels guilty for the separation of his parents. So, you start having payoff and understanding. You get the big payoff when he falls into a semi-coma and he’s in a state of mind to release the demons of his childhood. It’s about how you stretch it to a certain extent where the audience will go along with you but feel that there’s a breaking point. Now, you start giving things back to the audience.
TMD: You can see that payoff, especially in the scene that you’re describing where Alain finally speaks openly with his parents and he accepts his full name. That was really wonderful because, up until that point, it had kind of been played as a joke, like “What? That’s my real name?” You incorporate humor in a way that doesn’t take away from the drama. Why was it important for you to use humor in the film to get your message across?
PF: Alain Farah, the author of the book, has another brand of humor. I would say the character in the book is even less likable at the beginning. But, because of the humor, you accept it. The project could not have existed without humor, or it would’ve been something completely different.
I also think it’s the type of humor. There aren’t jokes, per se. It’s about how you portray a singular event as funny and dramatic at the same time. For Alain, when his mother says, “I forgive you, that’s my gift,” and he says, “You forgive me? Forgive me for what?” — it’s funny, but it’s not funny for him. And, if after this interview, I leave the house, miss a step and I break my nose, it’s not going to be funny. But, if we do an interview two years from now and I say, “You know what happened last time we spoke?” The story will be funny. This is how you have to deal with what’s humorous; it must be dramatic at the same time. That’s my brand of humor.
TMD: That translates well on screen, especially with the very grounded dialogue. What you do with the visuals to contrast that is very interesting. Particularly, the scene where the camera seems to be on a turntable at the wedding, that was very disorienting. The aspect ratio also changes throughout the movie. What went into the visual choices of the film and the flair they imbue?
PF: Well, I wanted to avoid just filming a guy that’s anxious. You start thinking, “Okay, this is not a book. I can’t be inside of his head all the time as a personal narrator.” So, cinema has to be the narration. The time structure can convey the idea of anxiety, but there are so many tools you can use in the editing, use of past and present. I had this feeling, also, when we were filming the kids, it might be useful to have Alain as a grown-up pop into a scene with his tuxedo confronting his younger self. Those are ideas I had during the shooting.
The aspect ratio was an intuitive idea. I thought, “if we go into the past, we might want to change the ratio to 4:3, which is square.” But we wanted to do the opposite. The square form matches the claustrophobic format, which would be more useful in the present. Then, we can emancipate the format when he regains consciousness at the end — let the audience breathe. You have to think in terms of cinema and stop thinking in terms of literature.
TMD: Your sound was also really wonderful. I liked the way the sound mixing always amped up the pressure and dictated when you’re able to feel at ease. This also works really well with the mix of languages in the film. In some spaces, it’s a kind of “Spanglish” derivative of Arabic, but as an Arabic speaker, it doesn’t sound inauthentic. How did you ensure that this sounds natural coming from the characters?
PF: Every city, when you look at the various Arabic communities in North America, has developed its own brand of — I don’t know what you’d call it — “Arab-English?” In our case, it’s French-Arabic, but it’s specific to Quebec. It’ll be another thing in Marseilles, another thing in New York. I think we can use that especially for the Arabic audience who will enjoy that.
I also had the idea that I would not subtitle everything. That once the mother goes into a rant or two people start fighting in Arabic, you don’t need to understand every word they’re saying. You understand that, if she jumps from French to Arabic, she’s really angry. You go back to your mother tongue when you’re angry.
The music was used in the same way at times. It’s source, then it becomes a score when it is part of his psychological environment, especially with a song from the Chemical Brothers. I also asked Martin Léon, who did most of my scores, “If you’re going to use instruments that relate to the Middle East, make sure to make them very modern.” Let’s use techno music. Let’s open the film on the zoom-out from two landmarks in Montreal and let’s have techno music with darbuka. It’s another way of conveying how mixed these communities have become.
TMD: You can really see all the care and precision put into the film. It’s been amazing to see someone like myself, coming from a Christian Arab family in the Western world, represented on screen for probably the first time in my life. Thank you for making this film.
PF: Thank you for your comments, it means a lot to me. It would make no sense to me if people like you didn’t recognize part of their life in the film. It’s not easy, because I lived a completely different life, but I was always attracted to this story. I think by staging people, either first- or second-generation immigrants, what you actually do is talk about yourself but through the eyes of someone else — with another culture, with other references, which just enriches the dialogue.
TMD: It really does. The film means a lot.
Daily Arts Writer Mina Tobya can be reached at mtobya@umich.edu.
