Intimate tale of love and loss

One Fine Morning

French (Mubi)

Director: Mia Hansen-Løve

Cast: Léa Seydoux, Pascal Greggory, Melvil Poupaud

Rating: 4/5

There’s something comforting about a film that unfolds like life itself, not fixating on its highs and lows but on the in-betweens and the unspoken. Mia Hansen-Løve’s 2022 Cannes Prize winner is an intimate portrait of that cycle of love, loss, and longing. The French drama premiered on Mubi last week.

Sandra Kienzler (Léa Seydoux) is a 30-something widow. With a backpack on, she dashes around the pretty-and-pastel city of Paris, picking up her daughter, Linn, from school, tending to her father Georg (Pascal Greggory), a philosophy teacher who is losing memory and eyesight, and working as a translator and interpreter. Enter Clément (Melvil Poupaud), an old friend. The chance encounter leads to a kiss, then a whirlwind romance, and a dream of a life together. But he is married and has a son.

Hereon, we see Sandra oscillate between finding her father a good but affordable care home, and pining for Clément.

The two men bring her joy but also hurt her and make her feel lonely. The recurring motif of light and shadow captures this duality. She dotes on her father yet he fails to recognise her but never his girlfriend Leila — her parents have separated. Thanks to Clément, she reclaims her body which she thought had “forgotten” how to make love but she doesn’t want to be his “mistress”.

Rousing music, dramatic cuts, punchy dialogues, the film features none, yet you are drawn to the familiarity and tenderness it offers. You get invested in Sandra’s life as if it was yours.

Léa delivers a restrained performance. Greggory looks so fragile in the last scenes that you want to give a tight hug to his character. Melvil keeps his madly-in-love act deceptively simple.

Some may find the 112-minute drama slow and ordinary but Mia (the director) does a fine job of keeping us hoping for that ‘one fine morning’ to arrive in Sandra’s life.