One Fine Morning

Mia Hansen-Løve has never shied away from the semi-autobiographical. It has been at the heart of her work since her second film, Father of My Children (2009), but it truly comes into focus in her third, Goodbye First Love (2011). Yet all eight of Hansen-Løve’s features have a certain intimacy that can only come from making the personal universal. Her latest, One Fine Morning, continues this trend with disarming simplicity. Premiering at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival less than nine months after debuting Bergman Island (2021) at the 2021 edition of the fest, One Fine Morning is another quietly crushing, beautifully self-assured entry in Hansen-Løve’s consistently outstanding filmography.

Between the declining health of her aging father, Georg (Pascal Greggory), and the day-to-day demands of her 8-year-old, Linn (Camille Leban Martins), Sandra (Léa Seydoux) already has her hands full. She also has to keep up with the responsibilities of her job as a translator. From political symposiums to movie screenings to public events, not to mention caring for her dad and daughter, Sandra has places to be and people to see from the moment she gets out of bed to the second her head hits the pillow again. Her own needs have no place in this daily routine. That is, until a chance encounter with old friend Clément (Melvil Poupaud) completely upends the delicate balance of her life.

Even if Hansen-Løve hadn’t been open about the inspiration for One Fine Morning — a project partially based on her experience with her father’s neurodegenerative disease — her connection to the material would have been apparent from the start. From the script to the screen, the film is littered with tiny details that could only come from close observation. The way Georg moves, shuffling and hunched over, as he meanders around his room. The innocence of childhood that tinges Linn’s remarks. Even the unpretentious romance of Sandra and Clément’s complicated adult relationship. It all feels uniquely lived in, but still avoids that occasional inaccessibility that can come from an artist being too close to their subject matter.

Semi-autobiography is a tricky beast. It can be used as a crutch by the filmmaker, holding them back from creating something truly interesting by keeping them boxed into a particular set of individualized parameters. Alternatively, it can be wielded as a weapon by the audience, drawing accusations of egotism and shouts of “What makes them so special?” or “Why should we care?” The responses to film à clef have swung between these two possibilities in recent years, with people either loving or hating the specificity of Lady Bird (2017), Roma (2018), The Souvenir (2019), Belfast (2021), Aftersun (2022), and The Fabelmans (2022), among others. However, with One Fine Morning, Hansen-Løve has crafted a film so vulnerable and truthful it effectively circumvents any cries of punctiliousness, esotericism, or self-indulgence.

In the act of looking inward, Hansen-Løve successfully unlocks something bigger than any one person or circumstance. One Fine Morning is not merely the story of losing a family member, or letting love in, or finding a healthy rhythm. Rather, it’s about how all these things meld together, how life is often both/and: a death and a rebirth, a separation and a reconciliation, a love and a loss, a happiness and a sadness. Rarely does a writer-director exert such nuanced understanding not only of their own existence but also how it relates to the human experience at large. Of course, it helps to have a trio of movingly restrained performances at the core. Together, Hansen-Løve with Seydoux, Greggory, and Poupaud transcend the personal to achieve the universal.