Sony Pictures Classics
Ah, the typical French film, so full of shots of French city life, plenty of adultery, and a deep, lingering sense of terrible sadness. Is it any coincidence that they popularized the idea of ennui? Going into a French film you know the sorts of conceits and ideas you should expect, but this is mainly because there have been so many so far. To stand out in that crowd, which includes some truly excellent movies, is difficult indeed.
One Fine Morning comes from writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve, and stars Léa Seydoux as Sandra Kienzler, widow and single mother to her daughter Linn (Camille Leban Martins) and dealing with her father Georg (Pascal Greggory), a once well-known professor who is now suffering from a degenerative illness. Sandra has to deal with the fact that her father needs specialized care which she cannot provide, and that he has to leave the apartment he’s lived in for so long.
As Sandra is starting to lose one more pillar of stability while still trying to raise her daughter, she happens to run into an old friend Clément (Melvil Poupaud), who is married with a kid, but the chemistry between the two cannot be denied. Very quickly, the two begin having an affair, and the movie theoretically puts things in a world of competing responsibilities — Sandra’s being a mother, the hardship of caring for her father, the excitement and secrecy of a new relationship, and her job as a translator.
We keep cutting back to Sandra’s job as a translator, and I keep waiting for it to have a thematic connection to anything else, but instead it’s simply the only stable thing in Sandra’s life. As to be expected, the movie takes some minor twists and turns, and we get plenty of shots of Léa Seydoux sobbing her eyes out in grief, pain, and heartbreak. Almost as to be expected.
Selling the relationship as something good instead of destructive really falls on the actors to manifest, and thankfully Léa Seydoux is a compelling protagonist, easy to root for with highly expressive moments. The movie itself has a muted feel, with softer colors and often low energy moments, except for the short breaks of romance in the bedroom.
But although it’s a romance, this is a ‘sad’ romance, so don’t expect it to go smoothly or even well at all. Instead the movie focuses on all these moments as brief bursts of happiness in a world filled with common moments of grief and sadness. Seydoux keeps your attention even when sometimes you wonder if the movie will ever be happy again.
Because of all that it’s hard to really recommend this one to most people — it really is a sort of niche genre, the French sad romance that’s also all about grief. Because these days, what indie movie isn’t about grief?
Not that I don’t understand the motivation, but sometimes it feels like it would be nice to be a little more balanced in the world that exists, which doesn’t always end in tragedy or hardship, at least not until it ends. An interesting and engaging example of this sort of movie, but likely doomed to be forgotten in the world of French sad romance movies.
One Fine Morning has a run time of 1 hour 52 minutes and is rated R for some sexuality, nudity and language.
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