One Fine Morning: Director Mia Hansen-Løve Exalts Everyday Life in Gentle Drama

By Karen Gordon

Rating: A

There is a deceptive simplicity to writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve’s latest film, One Fine Morning.

On the surface, it’s an easy-going movie about a woman juggling family obligations, but Hansen-Løve is a master of the slice-of-life scenario. Her movies feel as natural as a casual conversation with a neighbour. One of her gifts as a filmmaker is that she builds in so much that you feel connected to the characters, their lives, and concerns. You don't yearn for big dramatic moments but rather, enjoy the flow of life.

In the case of One Fine Morning, she is amply aided in all of this by a wonderful cast, led by Léa Seydoux.

Seydoux plays Sandra, a freelance translator and widowed mother of eight-year-old Linn (Camille Leban Martins). The two live in a small flat in Paris where the sleeping area is divided by a curtain. There’s limited privacy.

Sandra’s father Georg (Pascal Greggory), a beloved philosophy professor, has a rare neurodegenerative disease that is slowly robbing him of his vision, his memory, and his mobility. Sandra looks in on him frequently as does her mother, Georg’s ex-wife (Nicole Garcia), her sister Elodie (Sarah le Picard), and his long-term girlfriend Leila (Fejria Deliba).

But even with their help, his health has deteriorated to the point where he can’t live alone in his apartment anymore. From our first experience of him, watching the interaction between him and Sandra, you can see the affection between father and daughter, and how much has been lost. The family must move him out of his sunny, book-filled flat and into long-term care. Finding the right place to care for him properly is a challenge.

To some extent, Sandra’s life is one of obligation: running between her jobs, regular visits to her father to monitor his care, taking care of her daughter. She wears it lightly, managing it all with a thoughtful kindness. But the person who has been cut out of the equation is Sandra herself.

That begins to change when she runs into an old friend of her late husband’s. Clément (Melvil Poupard), is a scientist who has a son about the same age as Linn. There’s an attraction, and a connection between the two that is palpable. Clément is married, somewhat unhappily, but he and Sandra start an affair.

There is a lot of forward motion in One Fine Morning. Sandra has her world organized in a way to make this all efficient. With a short boyish haircut, no make up, and simply dressed, she’s an unfussy woman simply living her life. With her ever-present backpack, she is always on the move. But unfussy doesn’t mean she’s a void. While routines and demands shape her days, Sandra is open, vibrant, and emotionally attuned.

Hansen-Løve is exquisitely aware of the ups and down of ordinary life, awful one moment, joyful the next. And there is a lot of joy in the movie. As a writer, she can weave a few lines into a simple scene, a thought that takes the film to a deeper level without rattling the walls or our psyches. There’s a measured, thoughtfulness in her work. And Seydoux’s performance — spare, quiet, nuanced — anchors it all beautifully.

The result is a quiet film that doesn’t push an agenda, doesn’t rush, doesn’t trade on sensationalized emotion, but leaves us space to engage with wonderful characters. There’s a feeling of intimacy and sense of connection, open-heartedness and good will that stays long after the movie ends.

One Fine Morning. Written and directed by Mia Hansen-Løve. Starring Léa Seydoux, Pascal Greggory, Melvil Poupard, Camille Leban Martins, and Nicole Garcia. In theatres, February 10.