Mia Hansen-Løve Finds the Extraordinary in the Ordinary in One Fine Morning

ONE FINE MORNING / Un Beau Matin 

(Mia Hansen-Løve, 2022, France, rated R, 112 minutes) 

Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve specializes in films about regular people going through normal life events, which might sound dull, except she has a knack for finding the most interesting angles, and for hiring the most captivating performers, like Isabelle Huppert (Things to Come) and Vicky Krieps (Bergman Island).

Léa Seydoux, most recently of David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future, joins that lineage as Sandra, a widowed translator, single mother, and caretaker for a father (Pascal Greggory, HBO's Irma Vep from her ex-husband, Olivier Assayas) with a rare neuro-degenerative disease. She's handling things as best she can, but something has to give, especially since Georg is declining rapidly--so rapidly that he can barely figure out how to unlock the door to let her in or to use the bathroom without assistance. 

Unfortunately, most assisted living facilities in Paris are beyond her means. She also has to figure out what to do with the former philosophy professor's books, since she can't afford to maintain his apartment. (This part of the film reminded me of Gaspar Noe's Vortex, since Dario Argento's ailing writer also occupies a book-filled Parisian flat.)

If Sandra is single, she isn't alone. Family friend Clément (François Ozon favorite Melvil Poupaud), an astro-chemist--he prefers the term "cosmo-chemist"--is married, but travels often for work, and he and his wife have grown apart. About the five years she's spent on her own, she tells him, "I feel like my love life is behind me." He thinks she's being premature, and proves it by kissing her--and being kissed by her--while showing her around his office after hours.

The kiss leads to an affair that ensues while she and her mother and sister are attempting to relocate Georg to an assisted living facility. Until then, he stays in hospitals, receiving the round-the-clock care that he needs. It's a temporary fix that comes with its share of headaches. If Sandra has help, she bears the brunt of the responsibility for his welfare. 

As spring turns to summer, her eight-year-old daughter Linn (Camille Leban Martins) goes off to camp, and she and Clément venture tentatively outside her apartment, sometimes comfortably, sometimes not. They're more than friends, but not quite a couple. If he hides the affair from his wife at first, Sandra doesn't hide it from Linn. Though she likes Clément, she informs her mother with childish authority, "He can't be boyfriend and friend." "He's my friend and boyfriend--don't overthink it, okay?" Sandra smiles. 

But Clément isn't just married, he has a son, and the course of true love does not run smooth as he's torn between love for Sandra and devotion to his wife and child. As the seasons continue to change, decisions are made, though Hansen-Løve avoids depicting crucial moments in favor of their consequences. 

Even French films that ostensibly concern regular people have a tendency to glam things up, especially when the characters are comfortably middle-class. If Sandra isn't quite working class, I found her tiny kitchen table and frequent bus and train rides--she doesn't have a car--relatable. 

She's also world's away from Seydoux's past glamor-girl roles, like Madeleine Swann of Spectre and No Time to Die, with her utilitarian (Jean Seberg-like) hairstyle, makeup-free face, unfussy sweatshirts, and non-designer jeans. Seydoux's natural radiance shines through, but she's as ordinary-looking as possible (for a Louis Vuitton brand ambassador).  

In a way that describes this non-showy, non-melodramatic film, which plays almost like a companion to Bergman Island in which a couple (Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth) reaches the end of the road--in this case, the road lies ahead. Hansen-Løve has often drawn from her own life, and just as her previous film reflected the dissolution of her marriage to Olivier Assayas, One Fine Morning suggests her subsequent relationship with Laurent Perreau. 

She has also described it as a film about mourning a person, like her late father, while they're still alive. For those of us dealing with a family member who has Alzheimer's--a disease similar to Georg's Benson's syndrome--this makes perfect sense.

If there's a part of me that wanted this movie to be bigger or more consequential, Hansen-Løve--much like her level-headed protagonist--doesn't take on more than she can handle. Sandra's life changes in the year that she depicts, in ways both good and bad, but she doesn't become an entirely different person. She just becomes a more fully engaged human being--more aware, more appreciative, and more open to experience.  

One Fine Morning opens on Fri, Mar 3, at SIFF Cinema Uptown. Images from Les Films Pelléas / Sony Pictures Classics (Léa Seydoux and Pascal Greggory), Carole Bethuel / Les Films Pelléas / SPC (Seydoux and Melvil Poupaud), and Judicael Perrin / Cinetic Media (Mia Hansen-Løve).