One Fine Morning

In Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morn­ing, cin­e­ma appears twice as equal­ly ambiva­lent. First, the short film form becomes a metaphor for euthana­sia, and then, a screen­ing room offers the pro­tag­o­nist San­dra (Léa Sey­doux) the safe­ty to cry undis­turbed. Rem­i­nis­cent of the meta-mar­vel that was Bergman Island, but work­ing on a small­er scale, Hansen-Løve’s new offer­ing sees film as a cost­ly salvation.

We meet San­dra just as she’s tak­ing the dif­fi­cult deci­sion to place her ail­ing father Georg (Pas­cal Greg­gory) in a nurs­ing home, his life as a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor now sur­ren­dered to a neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­ease. At the same time, she rekin­dles an old flame with mar­ried man Clé­ment (Melvil Poupaud), a friend of her late hus­band and a father of a boy the age of her daughter.

From the film’s open­ing, we can’t help but notice the walls of books in Georg’s apart­ment, a silent wit­ness to his wors­en­ing con­di­tion. Among the titles wor­thy of stu­dious close-ups are ones by Hölder­lin, Han­nah Arendt, and Thomas Mann, an extend­ed metonymy for his life, his intel­lec­tu­al seek­ing, and the sta­bil­i­ty he no longer can count on. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, both San­dra and the French direc­tor — a philoso­phers’ daugh­ter her­self— share a devo­tion to the worlds bound between these cov­ers and their bor­rowed wis­dom. If the writ­ten word belonged to her par­ents, San­dra chan­nels an expe­ri­en­tial one: the impulse of life.

Hansen-Løve reunites with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Denis Lenoir who trans­forms the nat­ur­al light of the Parisian sum­mer­time into a tac­tile back­drop to bud­ding romance and approach­ing death alike. While Lenoir’s cam­era is nim­ble in the way it draws stairs, streets, and cor­ners with slow pans and tracks, it’s nev­er errat­ic nor impa­tient. In attend­ing to these tran­si­to­ry spaces, Hansen-Løve imbues the in-between with a reme­di­al qual­i­ty in the moments when San­dra is framed alone. On these occa­sions, reverse track­ing shots smooth­ly turn into pans as if the cam­era is just anoth­er passer­by, enchant­ed by Sandra’s grace­ful gait, chin up no mat­ter what. No won­der – Sey­doux is once again mar­vel­lous and a col­lab­o­ra­tion such as this seems long overdue.

As tear imprints on Seydoux’s beatif­ic face, we see hard cuts pair a dif­fi­cult watch with a lighter one: care home con­di­tions and a sea leop­ard sto­ry; talks about euthana­sia with child’s play. Even if they clash tonal­ly, hav­ing San­dra as the con­nect­ing tis­sue helps the film avoid the ​“woman-between-two-men” trope. Rather than sim­ply medi­at­ing, San­dra is searching.

Yes, love blos­soms as prepara­to­ry grief sets in, but this is time unfold­ing beyond coin­ci­dence and fate, it’s life itself. The wounds, the care, being a moth­er, a daugh­ter, and a mis­tress are only parts of the com­plex puz­zle, both her and all Mia Hansen-Løve pro­tag­o­nists are: flesh, blood, and soul.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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