These notes on Mia Hansen-Løve's One Fine Morning were written by Pate Duncan, PhD Student in the Department of Communication Arts at UW Madison. One Fine Morning screened as part of the Cinematheque's Fall Premieres series on September 21.
By Pate Duncan
Mia Hansen-Løve is at this point synonymous with intimate dramas. From 2016’s devastating Isabelle Huppert vehicle Things to Come to her more recent Bergman Island (2021), the French writer-director has made a name for herself by alchemically turning quiet heartache into cathartic relief. Her latest feature, 2022’s One Fine Morning (Un beau matin), manages to strike an even more resonant chord for Hansen-Løve, who described it as among her most personal works to date: “All my films, in one way or another, use autobiographical elements. Or I should say biographical, because the majority are not inspired by my own story but those of people dear to me. But this one is probably the closest to a self-portrait.” Premiering at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight, the film marks Hansen-Løve’s return to French-language filmmaking, her first film completely in her native tongue since 2016.
One Fine Morning follows French cinema powerhouse Léa Seydoux as Sandra Kienzler, a widowed mother and translator working in Paris, as she struggles with her father Georg’s (Pascal Greggory) declining health. Georg suffers from Benson’s syndrome, a rare form of dementia affecting visual processing and cognition; Hansen-Løve’s father suffered and eventually passed from the same disease while she wrote the film. All the more tragic is Georg’s earlier life as a philosophy professor (like both of the filmmaker’s parents), his disease robbing him of the life of the mind so integral to his work and personality. Rounding out his caretakers is his ex-wife, Sandra’s mother Françoise (Nicole Garcia, known for her films with Nouvelle Vague darlings Jacques Rivette and Alain Resnais), who prompts Sandra to consider putting Georg in a nursing home, and Leïla (Fejria Deliba), Georg’s girlfriend.
Sandra balances her work, motherhood, and caretaking alongside a new set of romantic difficulties after reconnecting with her late husband’s friend Clément (Melvil Poupaud, star of the great Éric Rohmer’s late masterpiece A Summer’s Tale). Moved by his affectionate company in such a difficult time, Sandra and Clément begin a relationship despite his own marriage. The film sees Sandra negotiating the uneasy romance alongside the obligations thrust upon her as a single mother and caring daughter, all while her father’s health begins to decline rapidly.
While suffering mothers, debilitating illness, and illicit affairs have historically been the stuff of the campiest melodrama or, at the other extreme, the theatrical melancholy of Hansen-Løve’s avowed influence Ingmar Bergman, such content becomes gentle and thoughtful in her handling. The direction is distanced, favoring medium close-ups, emphasizing a gently percolating atmosphere, and suggesting interiority through gestures and movement on top of the film’s sparkling script. Hansen-Løve constructs a cozy, erudite mise-en-scène too, one populated with ample bookcases and plush sweaters, sitting squarely between the effortless lifestyle porn of Rohmer’s Paris and Woody Allen’s ‘80s New York apartments. The books are more than mere set decoration, though: as Georg’s mind falters, Sandra remarks how his library is perhaps more true to who her father is than the man for whom she’s currently caring. The influence of literary works extends beyond the film’s visuals, though, and is in fact what gives the film its title, borrowing from a poem by renowned French poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert.
Impressive still is Hansen-Løve’s script and her cast’s performances, both of which carry an understated naturalism and unpretentious humanity. This directorial clarity, intentionally attempting to stay true to life, is particularly evident in the performances of Seydoux and Greggory, with a kind of feminism in mind for the former and autobiographical resemblance to her father in the later. Hansen-Løve wrote the script with Seydoux in mind, saying “I aimed to portray Léa as more real and raw, so we could see deep inside her, beneath her exterior. So she wore casual clothes and had short hair. At first, she’s a very regular person, then when she falls in love and starts this passionate relationship, we rediscover her femininity. I enjoyed the idea of a mature sensuality as she rediscovers her own body.” Seydoux’s sex appeal has been exploited in more conventional ways for her roles in films like the James Bond thrillers Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021), so her down-to-earth role here occasions a more three-dimensional performance from the internationally renowned actress. For Pascal Greggory’s part, the actor was chosen in part because he resembled Hansen-Løve’s late father, and the director even played recordings of him to Greggory to help him get into character: “[Greggory] truly seemed to understand his personality—including the way he stayed polite, even when he was losing his mind. I always found that overwhelming about my father. The last thing that he managed to preserve was his politeness. Pascal captured the feeling of who my father was. It’s an extraordinary interpretation.”
Cinephiles with a taste for French cinema and cultural production may note One Fine Morning as falling in line with recent French cultural conversations on aging, particularly with regard to assisted suicide and euthanasia. Michael Haneke’s 2012 film Amour, Michel Houellebecq’s 2019 novel Serotonin and his more recent op-eds, and Gaspar Noé’s 2021 film Vortex all tackle the question of aging and mortality with a fairly grim outlook. One Fine Morning continues this inquiry, though with much lighter touch and, given the autobiographical content, arguably more personal investment.
The result of this careful observation is one of the decade’s most remarkable dramas, a small film that enshrines the mundane with the kind of importance most other films reserve for the exceptional. Mia Hansen-Løve turns a devastating loss in her own life into a generous work of art, assisted in this effort by world-class collaborators. It is more than likely that anyone watching this film—in its native France or here in the U.S.—has been affected by caring for or losing a loved one after a battle with neurological diseases due to aging; Hansen-Løve offers up a sensitive, cathartic work recognizing the difficulties taken on by caregivers while honoring the life and memory of those for whom they care.