‘One Fine Morning’ NYFF 2022 Review – An Undramatic Drama From Mia Hansen-Løve

Sandra Kienzler’s going through a tough time in her life. Not only is she working full-time while raising her daughter alone, but her elderly father needs full time care due to a rare neurodegenerative disease. But then she runs into an old friend at a Parisian park. They get dinner. They end up in a room alone together. And they, despite him being married with a young kid– begin a passionate relationship.

Mia Hansen-Løve’s latest film, One Fine Morning, follows the contours of Sandra’s daily life over these tumultuous few months as her father declines, and her affair with Clément intensifies. Despite having a premise worthy of a TLC show, the film is very mellow. Ultimately, Hansen-Løve’s decision to tamp any drama to a minimum creates a film that’s rooted and touching, but also restricts it from reaching the full depth of its narrative.

One Fine Morning works best as a grounded portrait of Sandra: less concerned with grand narratives, more with the minor moments that build her everyday life. An exchange between ailing father and daughter in a nursing home room. A walk to school with young daughter Linn (Camille Leban Martins). One of the many afternoons spent kissing her friend-turned-lover Clément (Melvil Poupaud). These scenes are short and concise, often with no background music, preserving the straight-from-real-life feel the entire film exudes.

Overall, the film’s ability to capture how her life changes over time by linking together seemingly insignificant everyday moments is impressive. Each individual scene may not directly seem plot relevant, but they weave together like threads: Remove one or two, and the rest can still hold. Take too many out, and the entire thing unravels. It’s a beautiful way to explore the passage of time far beyond the span of a singular fine morning.

To no one’s surprise, Léa Seydoux, as Sandra, takes top billing in the film. After all, this is a rare outing for an actress who’s known for many larger-than-life personalities. (As Hansen-Løve joked in a Q+A at New York Film Festival, Seydoux has said the opportunity to play a normal woman is “exotic” for her). And she’s been lauded—deservedly so, for the most part—for vividly capturing the subtle, nuanced emotions of an ordinary character. But One Fine Morning isn’t only about Sandra, and the film isn’t solely a Seydoux showcase. The entire ensemble shines, from Camille Leban Martins as Sandra’s brutally honest kid to Nicole Garcia as Françoise, Georg’s ex-wife who’s responsible for arranging his care.

Pascal Greggory’s performance as Georg is a standout in the film. To those around him, Georg has become defined by what he’s not anymore: Sandra views the books left behind in his apartment as more evocative of his personality than the man himself. It would be easy— and lazy, and problematic— to show him as nothing more than a hollow shell that Sandra and her family must shuffle from nursing home to nursing home. But Greggory captures a deeply conflicted man struggling with the disorientation of memory and language loss, with adjusting to the reality that is warping around him. He delivers Georg’s fragmentary and often difficult to parse words with both vulnerability and tenderness, giving viewers glimpses into the world of a man swallowed into void of the disease.

I say “glimpses” because we don’t get too much interiority from Georg, other than what Greggory wrings out of the script and a few lines from other characters. This may reflect a broader problem with the film as a whole. Sure, One Fine Morning is excellent at preserving surface moments, occasionally allowing bits of emotion to bubble up. But this subtlety frequently borders on insubstantiality, making it difficult to find much character depth or thematic throughlines throughout the narrative.

You could argue that real life is just like that: banal, plodding, undramatic, without catharsis. But an “ordinary life” isn’t a universal concept, and the decision to avoid “drama”— more accurately, confrontation and high emotions – is an artistic one. Oftentimes, this film often feels like life without the reflection, where its central characters live their lives without taking a close, hard look at themselves and their situation, and the film’s many complicated—and often messy— affairs never quite come to a head.

We learn that Clément’s affair is ripping apart his family, including his young son— but we hardly see that family onscreen, and Sandra herself is conflicted about being his “mistress.” We see how Françoise does most of the caring for Georg— Sandra can’t even find it in herself to help her father to the bathroom when she visits. We’re offered tastes of the broader world and its very significant problems, like the climate action group Extinction Rebellion, Macron, and the Yellow Vests— but as passing humorous anecdotes from the hapless Françoise, to whom getting caught at protests is a running joke. Sandra herself is isolated from these realities. The film doesn’t give these facets much weight; it creates an explosive situation but pretends the fuse doesn’t exist.

For some viewers, the subtle emotions in One Fine Morning will be incredibly touching. After all, a film that captures what the day to day is like can be relatable in its accuracy, insightful in its nuanced depiction of everyday life. But others might be faced with a dilemma: If art simply shows life as it is, and not much more than that, then what’s the point? For them, the film’s impact may be as fleeting as a fine morning that fades into the afternoon.

One Fine Morning was viewed in the Main Slate section of New York Film Festival 2022.

Director: Mia Hansen-Løve

Writer: Mia Hansen-Løve

Rated: NA

Runtime: 112m