One Fine Morning

Watching Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning is a fresh reminder of just how skillful of a storyteller she is, who often writes engaging characters who find themselves with sudden vulnerabilities once abruptly faced with life’s chaotic curve balls. Switching between parenting both her ailing father and her young daughter, Lea Seydoux’s character endures a lot of uncertainties as she is confined to so many anxieties. The deeply personal film pulls you right in with the heart of the characters, and the narrative is filled with genuine pathos, internal conflicts, heartache, laughter, and it just shimmers with life in its brisk pacing that runs 110-minute running time.

Sandra (the superb Seydoux), in the film’s opening scenes instantly brings empathy. We learn her father, Georg (Pascal Greggory), a recently retired philosophy writer and professor, was forced into retiring once he suddenly started suffering a neurogenerative disease. We observe Sandra coaching Georg how to open the door to his apartment and holding a conversation with him, which proves just how much deep affection Love has for her characters.  Hansen-Løve observes Sandra’s patience and suppressed emotions of someone faced with such agonizing scenarios.

Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics

Sandra ends up banding together with her sister, Elodie (Sarah Le Pcard) and their mother, Francois (Nicole Garcia), who is now an ex-wife of George, in which the three women must decide how they want to move forward with the unavoidable situation. Hansen-Løve also humanely and vividly explores how people deal with such circumstances as well: finding themselves doing spontaneous things, trying to find joy, while always being inundated with anguish. The film is filled with grace and dignity, and Hansen-Løve’s vision becomes more of a character study of Sandra’s daily routines, the mundaneness, and how she must cope with the uncertainty and challenging decisions that rely on George’s fate of deciding to put him in a suitable nursing home or hiring a caregiver.

Sandra is no stranger to grief; she is a widow and a single mother. During the same morning at her father’s apartment, she encounters Clement (Mevil Poupaud), who was once a close friend of her departed husband. She instantly finds a human connection with Clement, and she finds herself irrationally building a romance for him, in which we find out, Clement is in a loveless marriage. This only adds to the extent of Sandra’s whirling life, in which she works as a French-English interpreter at business and political conferences, and she has to juggle raising her maturing daughter, Linn (Camile Leban Martins). Hansen-Løve has the flair for building strong character-depth for independent women, which includes such films as Bergman Island (2021) and Goodbye First Love (2011), which are about young women faced with struggles that only augment her characters independence. With One Fine Morning, this is easily Hansen-Løve’s strongest characterization yet.

Some of the most melancholic insights of One Fine Morning is how the appreciation of arts can shape a person’s sensibilities and personality. This is quite revealing when Sandra treats her father’s book collection as a substantial part of his life and even hers, because it is. She holds deep affection for her father’s love for literature and feels greater sorrow that his mind is losing all the great knowledge that he cultivated from those books. She ponders what will happen with the book collection, in which Sandra wants the legacy of the books to live on, since they are objects that serve as reflective traces that define who he was before his mind fades away.

Despite the sadness, there is a lot of joyfulness to be found. The romance might between Sandra and Clement might appear perfunctory at first, but it’s never hasty and ends up delivering unfeigned delight. In fact, the romance recalls the work of Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said, Lovely & Amazing) because Hanson blends the romance with indecision, and she welds together a very honest film where nothing ever feels contrived. They are both characters that hold sincere attachment towards another, but they are both in very difficult situations in their lives as well.

This all works not only for part of Hansen-Løve’s deep characterizations, but she has also written a very guarded character with Sandra here. She is a woman who hasn’t been on a date in nearly five years, since her husband’s death, but it’s also a testament to Seydoux’s skill as the lead character in performance. Seydoux is a natural force, she brilliantly embodies Sandra’s life experiences, and we feel from the performance both her past traumas and the new afflictions she is faced with. Everything from how guarded and emotionally distant she is to how she eventually comes out of shell and shows affection to Clement is superbly acted and scripted.

Each of the scenes with Linn and Georges are quite illuminating as well. Weather it’s teasing Linn with her own ice cream cone, or asking her father the length of her hair, both hold levels of joy and catharsis. All around, Hansen-Løve’s latest effort is not so much about-facing grief, but one that examines how we must readjust and recharge ourselves through the abruptness. of life. It may be a very bittersweet film about the traps of life, but it’s also a deeply satisfying gem from start to finish.

One Fine Morning is now playing in limited theaters.