One Fine Morning dir by Mia Hansen-Løve

       As a whole, One Fine Morning a film directed by Mia Hansen-Love and released last January, is not a particularly memorable film: the candle of its twofold drama, that of Sandra’s dying father and of her affair with a married man, burns slowly. Sandra’s story is a slice of life, however, that is a world worth entering if not for its dramatic intrigue, then for the way that Hansen-Love makes folly and fatality so comfortable. Hansen-Love illuminates One Fine Morning, even in all its plainness, with her signature golden hue.
       If you saw her 2021 release “Bergman Island,” you will notice a lot of similarities between the two films and their use of color and lighting. The film is set in Paris and has both a very summery chromatic and a gorgeous color scheme. Although Hansen-Love is French, her films do not look “French.” The mise en scene looks Dutch or Swedish. This may have something to do with her heritage on her paternal side; her father immigrated to France from Denmark. Apart from her own films, it reminded me a lot of the scenery and coloring of the 1995 Dutch feminist film “Antonia’s Line” dir by Marleen Gorris that has been described by critics and commentators as a “feminist fairy tale.” Though Hansen-Love’s film does resist the female gaze as Antonia’s Line does, it has none of the mythology of Antonia’s Line. The temper of its feminism is revealed, for instance, in Sandra’s line of work – in the film she is translating Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s letters (a Swiss-German writer, and also an iconic lesbian and a tragic beauty) - or in the following exchange between Sandra and her daughter Linn about her boyfriend:

Linn (talking to Sandra about Clement): “He can’t be both friend and boyfriend.”

Sandra: “He’s my friend and boyfriend. Don’t overthink it, okay?” (1:00:53)

       The relationship between Sandra and Linn, her eight-year-old daughter, is very charming and a hallmark of the film; the chemistry between the actors is joyful. It’s important to remember that while this film is about handling the experience of an ailing parent alongside a personal drama, and determining how to prioritize the former, it’s also a film about the experience of motherhood and, while the other main characters do not collectively have much more screen time than Lea Seydoux’s character, the film is Sandra’s story. Seydoux’s emotional range as an actor is impressive. She depicts the subtlety in the senses of loss she feels for both her father and her lover Clement with expertise. The senses of loss for these two male figures in her life is different and she captures this. There is one tender moment when she depicts Sandra’s breakdown when one of her father’s students (he was a former college Philosophy professor) asks her how he is (in many scenes of the film we see his dissolution from a neurodegenerative disease called Benson’s syndrome). Her strain of sadness is depicted with magnificence.

       Though there are many, several of the moments that highlight the charming quality of Sandra and Linn’s relationship are either the way Linn rejects Sandra’s offering of her hand as they are separated on an escalator or too a scene when Linn is pretending there is an issue with her knee and Sandra asks the doctor examining her, who has said to Sandra that Linn is fine, “Do I play along?” (1:29:24) A moment that displays Sandra’s style of mothering and the nature of her relationship with her daughter is when Linn sees that Clement, her mother’s boyfriend, is in bed with her mother. It is a beautiful scene and one that I think reveals the touch of the female director – Linn doesn’t judge Sandra or show shock or surprise when she sees Clement– she laughs and just looks bashful. (56:53) I sort of expected or had the slight anticipation that the daughter, upon seeing Clement in her mother’s bed, would be angry or jealous or ashamed of her mother, which may be a preconception or an ingrained bias I have due to the manner in which I have seen male directors stage such a scene in the past.
       The film isn’t political but there is one engaging scene where Hansen-Love delves into the national politics of her native France. Sandra’s mother and her mother’s new husband are discussing her mother’s “recent ANV-COP 21 mission” in which, alongside a nonviolent ecologist group, she took down a portrait of Emmanuel Macron at City Hall. (0:22:47) This scene is clearly referencing tension surrounding climate policy and perhaps other policy issues surrounding the lead up to the 2017 French presidential election following The Paris Agreement or the UN Climate Change Conference or (COP21) held in 2015 in Paris, France. Another really engaging scene in the film, and one worth watching for its staging, is one when the adults at a Christmas party hide the children behind a curtain and pretend that Santa is coming. I believe it is an homage to similar scenes in Bergman films.
       I was struck by Hansen-Love’s visual framing in one scene where Sandra is in a red dress in front of Monet’s wall. (42:42) It is a scene I saw in promotional materials for the film, and understandably so. I watched an interview in the New York Film Festival wherein there was conversation surrounding Lea Seydoux being captured by a female director and how this approach altered her on-screen appearance, which has tended to be more red-lipped and sultry as in her character Dr. Madeleine Swann in the James Bond films.
       There’s something about Hansen-Love’s pace that I noticed in this film: she is very efficient. I do wonder about how this may be at the cost of any degree of quality. Hansen-Love, who has written every screenplay for each of her films, writes with short, discrete scenes, and consequentially, there is a lot happening in this film with many scenes that are flipped through very quickly, like a photo booth flip book. She mentions in the same interview referenced above that she has never not shot a script that she has written, which is quite unusual for many American writer-directors. In a separate interview at Cannes she writes, “When an idea for a movie comes, I don’t overcomplicate things, I embrace it, with the thought that this may be my last time.”

Star Rating: 7 out of 10

Further Links to Explore:

1.      “Mia Hansen-Love on the Making of One Fine Morning”

2.      “Mia Hansen-Love Interview – The Seventh Art”