R | 1h 53min | Drama, Romance | 24 February 2023 (USA)

While not her finest effort (that would be “Things to Come” from 2016), writer and director Mia Hansen-Love’s “One Fine Morning” (French: “Un beau matin”) is yet another worthwhile inclusion for her consistently impressive résumé.

A huge devotee of Ingmar Bergman (Bergman’s surname was included in her two most recent efforts), Hansen-Love eschews narrative overindulgence, instead favoring frank, unadorned storytelling.

For fans of classic, mid-20th century European neo-realism, this approach will be highly welcomed. This film is one that relies on nuance, things that are left unsaid, and the perhaps dangerous assumption that the audience can agree to these terms and follow along without complaint.

Léa Seydoux (think a younger Mia Farrow by way of Scarlett Johansson) stars as Sandra, a widowed single mother who makes what appears to be a decent living in Paris as an interpreter. She’s a great mother to her daughter Linn (Camille Leban Martins), a ‘tween who has adjusted as well as can be expected to life after losing her father.

During a trip to a park, Sandra runs into Clément (Melvil Poupaud), a friend of her late husband who is married with a son about Linn’s age. They exchange pleasantries, make semi-obligatory promises of staying in touch, and get on to getting back to their lives, yet there is a slowly smoldering undercurrent of longing attached to their chance meeting.

The next 15 minutes find Sandra and Clément dancing around but not quite addressing the inevitable—something those of us are fortunate enough to find at least once in our lifetime. This heady, tasteful, and incremental lead-up to eventual congress lends the production a marked level of class and decorum. It is a perfect and understated example of flirting: a situation where neither of the participants wishes to reveal the true intense nature of their longing before the other admits to it.

Clément is a professional cosmochemist (someone who collects and examines space matter such as meteorites and asteroids), a job that requires frequent global travel. These long stretches away from home has put an understandable level of strain on his marriage, which only gets exacerbated by the increased amount of time he spends with Sandra and Linn.

Initially, Sandra takes Clément’s absences and time spent with his family in stride, as she has her hands full being the chief caregiver of her ailing father Georg (Pascal Greggory). Once a noted philosopher and author, Georg is suffering from Benson’s syndrome, a degenerative disorder and a variant of Alzheimer’s disease that results in blindness and muscular atrophy.

For anyone who has not had to care for sick parents, this is a nerve-fraying and often financially draining endeavor. Neither Sandra, Georg, his ex-wife Françoise (Nicole Garcia), nor his modest pension will provide enough funds for ideal care, so he ends up being transferred from one facility to the next.

There are some who might find Hansen-Love’s screenplay complicated and messy, while others will appreciate its reflection and capturing of real life—something that is often complicated and messy. If for no other reason, Hansen-Love deserves high marks for “keeping it real,” not sugarcoating (or oversimplifying) the story and leaving the fates of some, but not all, of the characters open-ended.

As for Seydoux, best known to American audiences for her role as the love interest in the most recent James Bond flick (“No Time to Die”), Sandra is just the latest in a line of characters she’s played who keep their cards close to the vest and their emotions in check.

Many (myself included) have compared Seydoux’s acting to that of Greta Garbo: subtle, understated, melancholic, spare, and mysterious. Seydoux is all of those things and more in “One Fine Morning,” portraying a woman being pulled in multiple directions, whose priority is placating and accommodating everyone in her life except herself.

Sandra’s emotional and spiritual catharsis, arriving halfway through the film’s final act, also provides the film with a much needed pressure-release valve. She eventually realizes that if she doesn’t occasionally put her own concerns and desires first, she’ll eventually be of no help to those she cares about the most; it’s something we all should do once in a while.

Presented in subtitled French and German with infrequent English.

‘One Fine Morning’
Director: Mia Hansen-Love
Stars: Léa Seydoux, Melvil Poupaud, Pascal Greggory, Camille Leban Martins, Nicole Garcia
Running Time: 1 hour, 53 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Release Date: Feb. 24, 2023
Rating: 4 out of 5