At The Movies: One Fine Morning
Sandra (Lea Seydoux) lives in a small apartment in Paris with her eight-year-old daughter. Her parents have long separated, and Sandra regularly visits her father, Georg (Pascal Greggory), an academic whose health has begun to deteriorate. Whilst she and her strong-willed mother (Nicole Garcia) struggle to agree on finding Georg a safe place to live, Sandra unexpectedly reconnects with an old friend, Clément (Melvil Poupaud). A passionate relationship begins to form, but not without repercussions.
One Fine Morning portrays the struggles of a single mother trying to balance her life. She works as a translator while trying to juggle her daughter’s school life and also that of her father who has a neurodegenerative disease and needs to go into care and then sort through his belongings when he gets in to care. As Georg puts it “I wait for the thing that should come and it doesn’t”. On top of all this she starts having an affair with a friend, a married friend, who is a cosmo-chemist and travels a lot.
It is not a cheerful movie, although one had to smile when Sandra’s mother becomes involved with the Extinction Rebellion movement, a topic a bit close to home here in Adelaide.
Writer/ Director Hansen-Løve weaves autobiographical elements into this delicate and heartfelt story of familial and romantic connections, and finding strength against challenging odds. Seydoux is radiant as her lead, bringing tremendous warmth and empathy to her role and the film as a whole.
One Fine Morning won the award for the Best European Movie at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. It is an unsophisticated, low-key movie without a real beginning or end but it is a movie that grabs you from the opening minutes and takes you for a heartbreaking ride.
One Fine Morning is one fine film. Don’t miss it.
Movie Review by Geoff Jenke
One Fine Morning at Palace Nova Cinema’s from 8 June 2023. Advance screenings 2, 3 & 4 June.
