Movie review: ‘One Fine Morning’ a subtle study of loss, life

DULUTH — Though “One High quality Morning” is about its lead character Sandra’s private life relatively than her skilled endeavors, it repeatedly follows her to work. Sandra is a translator primarily based in Paris, sitting in on the whole lot from veterans’ memorials to coverage discussions and translating from French to English or vice versa.

Author/director Mia Hansen-Love (“All Is Forgiven,” “Father of My Kids,” “Issues to Come”) might have included a lot of the character’s dry work life to spotlight the numerous respects wherein Sandra is a go-between. A translator satisfies audio system’ should be heard with out inserting any of her personal ideas, and Sandra can also be busy assembly different individuals’s wants when she’s off the clock.

Sandra has so little thought for her personal needs that she hasn’t dated anybody in 5 years. Lea Seydoux is without doubt one of the most voluptuous actors of her era, but when she’s been overly sexualized in earlier roles (keep in mind

the “Blue is the Warmest Coloration” controversy?),

right here she’s battened down. Seydoux barrels by way of the Metropolis of Lights in a thick coat, a shapeless quick haircut and a sensible backpack.

“How might this physique keep asleep for therefore lengthy?” asks Sandra’s good friend Clement (Melvil Poupaud) after ending her sexual drought, as Seydoux lies nude earlier than the digicam. It is one of many film’s few unintentionally awkward moments, seeming to counsel that Sandra’s state of affairs is all of the extra poignant as a result of she occurs to be a bombshell.

Whereas Sandra’s affair with the married Clement offers the movie’s plot pressure, Hansen-Love appears to comprehend that is a narrative that is been advised many instances. Since you’ve got made it 5 paragraphs into this evaluation of a French romantic drama, you may need additionally learn Sally Rooney’s novel “Conversations with Buddies” and watched its exquisitely excruciating 2022 TV adaptation — which equally follows a younger girl falling deeply in love with a person who will not go away his spouse.

As a substitute of centering the affair, “One High quality Morning” explores how Sandra’s emotional life rests on two poles: her relationship together with her precocious daughter (Camille Leban Martins) and together with her father (Pascal Greggory), who’s slowly dying of a neurodegenerative illness. The rationale Sandra’s physique — and, presumably, different facets of her individual — have been “asleep” for therefore lengthy is that she splits her days amongst work, youngster care and elder care.

The movie’s most transferring high quality is Hansen-Love’s refusal to painting Sandra as a sufferer of destiny. At the same time as her father is shuffled from one care facility to a different, all the employees who present that care are depicted sympathetically. Nobody stops to level fingers and lay blame, not even Sandra’s mom (Sarah Le Picard), who’s lengthy been divorced from the daddy and takes a brusquer method to the household’s challenges.

Contributed / Sony Photos Classics

Neither is there any contrived drama involving Sandra’s youngster. The lady’s response to discovering that her mother has a bedmate is a crisp and refreshing second that is laborious to think about coming throughout with such genuineness right here on our aspect of the Atlantic, the place intercourse has at all times been a extra freighted topic. Martins’ endearingly underplayed response is dealt with with heat and beauty.

Whereas the film has a comparatively gentle tone given its grave material, the shoot should have been an emotionally exhausting expertise for Seydoux. Her eyes are often brimming with tears, although she hardly ever has the posh of time and house to sob. The efficiency is a portrait of grief which will reduce very shut for viewers who’ve additionally skilled family members fading away by way of the sluggish, relentless progress of dementia.

Sandra’s father was a professor of philosophy, and although he can now not type complicated ideas his questing orientation factors towards the elemental questions of life. What are we to do with our finite lives? Is a relationship that makes us intensely joyful price it, even when it won’t final without end?

The laborious fact, “One High quality Morning” suggests, is that none of {our relationships} will final without end. When Clement tells Sandra the 2 ought to “benefit from the few days we’ve” on this earth, it might be his loins speaking, however they do have some extent.

“One High quality Morning” opens Friday, March 3, on the Zeitgeist Zinema in Duluth. For tickets and data, see

zeitgeistarts.com.

Arts and leisure reporter Jay Gabler joined the Duluth Information Tribune in 2022. His earlier expertise contains eight years as a digital producer at The Present (Minnesota Public Radio), 4 years as theater critic at Minneapolis alt-weekly Metropolis Pages, and 6 years as arts editor on the Twin Cities Each day Planet. He is a co-founder of popular culture and inventive writing weblog The Tangential; he is additionally a member of the Nationwide E-book Critics Circle and the Minnesota Movie Critics Alliance. You’ll be able to attain him at jgabler@duluthnews.com or 218-279-5536.