One Fine Morning
Un beau matin

From the very first image of One Fine Morning, I thought I was watching a European film from the 1970s. It's a wide shot of a woman walking towards us down a cobblestone street flanked by rows of flats with doors that open right to ground level—none of those annoying steps like we have in the States! If the woman walking towards camera in the opening shot were not Léa Seydoux, and were she not dealing with a cell phone in the scene that follows, the entire picture could feel like it was made during an earlier decade of the previous century. The film's plain white superimposed title appears on screen without a drop-shadow or any hint of being placed there by anything other than an analogue optical printer. Then there's the warm, organic, fine-grain cast of the film stock, with the type of pleasant, inviting look that contemporary cinematographers are always saying can be easily recreated digitally, yet they almost never do. From those opening titles to the final credits, One Fine Morning plays like one of the many small, rich human dramas that used to get made in Europe and released internationally all the time during the prior century. The everyday themes of movies like this are unremarkable (and therefore today seem rather unmarketable), but their relatable characters and compelling, realist stories can be revelatory and hold a timeless appeal.

One Fine Morning is the latest from Mia Hansen-Løve (Goodbye First Love, Things to Come, Bergman Island) and it continues her streak of intimate, deeply felt familial and romantic stories made with a lightness of touch that frees them of any traces of melodrama. Seydoux plays Sandra, a young Parisian widow raising her daughter alone, who works as a translator and helps care for her ageing father. The father, Georg (Pascal Greggory), is a former philosophy professor who has gone blind from a degenerative disease and whose oncoming dementia will soon require more care than Sandra, her sister, and a paid companion can provide. Into this mix comes an old friend of Sandra and her late husband, an affable and attractive fellow named Clément (Melvil Poupaud). Though he's married with a son, Sandra soon falls into a passionate affair with him.

Powering the story is the emotional juxtaposition between the sad, difficult, and painful aspects of Sondra's life—presiding over her father's decline, dealing with her daughter's rebellious tendencies, and falling in love with a man she knows she can't fully have—and the joyful exuberance of celebrating her father's life, watching her daughter grow self-sufficient, and experiencing the affection and attention of a lover after five years of neglect. Sandra's day job as a translator carries over to all her roles in life. She's guiding her daughter into the world while helping her father out of it. She's navigating the various needs, policies, and declarations of her mother, her sister, and the people who run public eldercare facilities in Paris. Most of all, she's doing her own interpreting of what Clément says to her, balancing his words with his actions. Sandra's mature awareness of the potential outcomes of each choice she makes comes across with every expression on Seydoux’s lovely face. This role is one of the least glamorous that the luminous French actress and Louis Vuitton model, now well into her prime as an international movie star, has taken on. It is also Seydoux's most complex performance. The character and the performance make One Fine Morning the most moving of Hansen-Løve’s many unidealized depictions of a woman navigating matters of the heart and the mind in contemporary France.

The picture is also a prime example of why I still believe shooting on film makes an appreciable difference not only to the visual look of a picture but also to its effectiveness in capturing humanity on screen. When a small movie like this one is shot on celluloid there is a palpable difference in how every aspect of it comes together for the cast and crew and comes across to the viewer. While One Fine Morning may seem a minor, even aimless picture at first, by the time we reach the end, all of its disparate threads come together to reveal a profound commentary on what it means to live life to the fullest with grace, kindness, and passion.

Twitter Capsule:
The most moving yet of Hansen-Løve’s many unidealized depictions of a woman navigating matters of the heart and mind. Seydoux sheds her movie star glamour and power to create her most complex and vulnerable performance yet.