Driving Madeleine

Driving Madeleine (French: Une belle course) is a 2022 French-Belgian drama film directed by Christian Carion.^[2]

Driving Madeleine
French	Une belle course
Directed by	Christian Carion
Written by	Christian Carion Cyril Gély
Produced by	Christian Carion Laure Irrmann
Starring	Line Renaud Dany Boon Alice Isaaz Jérémie Laheurte
Cinematography	Pierre Cottereau
Edited by	Loïc Lallemand
Music by	Philippe Rombi
Production companies	Une Hirondelle Productions Pathé TF1 Films Production Artémis Productions Shelter Prod
Distributed by	Pathé (France) Alternative Films (Belgium)
Release dates	23 August 2022 (2022-08-23) (FFA) 21 September 2022 (2022-09-21) (France)
Running time	91 minutes
Countries	France Belgium
Language	French
Box office	$5.5 million[1]

Premise

The film stars Line Renaud as Madeleine, an elderly Parisian woman, who is moving into a nursing home; en route, she asks taxi driver Charles (Dany Boon) to detour to various locations around the city that have meant something to her in her life.

Cast

• Line Renaud as Madeleine
• Dany Boon as Charles
• Alice Isaaz as Young Madeleine
• Jérémie Laheurte as Ray
• Gwendoline Hamon as Denise
• Julie Delarme as Karine
• Thomas Alden as Mathieu
• Hadriel Roure as Young Mathieu

Production

The film entered production in mid-2021.^[3]

Release

The film premiered on 23 August 2022 at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival.^[4] It was also screened as a special presentation at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival,^[5] before going into commercial release on 21 September. The film was released theatrically in the United States on 12 January 2024 by Cohen Media Group.

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 49 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Fueled by the sparkling chemistry between Line Renaud and Dany Boon, Driving Madeleine proves a sweetly sentimental drama that deftly tugs the heartstrings."^[6] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 65 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[7]

Renaud won the Tiantan Award for Best Actress at the 2023 Beijing International Film Festival,^[8] where the film was one of the 15 shortlisted films competing for the festival's 10 Tiantan Awards.^[9][10] Driving Madeleine was nominated for the Japan Academy Film Prize for Outstanding Foreign Language Film at the 47th Japan Academy Film Prize ceremony.^[11][12][13]

Remake

Driving Madeleine was remade in Japan by Shochiku as Tokyo Taxi, directed by Yoji Yamada and starring Chieko Baisho and Takuya Kimura, which is scheduled to be released in November 2025.^[14]