Start the week with a film: ‘One Fine Morning’ is a terrific tale of love amidst loss

Mia Hansen-Love’s new film One Fine Morning packs into 112 minutes an epic tale of tragic degeneration and hard-earned rejuvenation. Recently premiered on MUBI, the French-language drama is one of Hansen-Love’s most acutely observed and finest works.

One Fine Morning is suffused with the unshowy staging, subtle shifts in emotion, and naturalistic performances that characterise Hansen-Love’s cinema. Her screenplay has the flow of a great vast river as well as the serenity of a garden pond.

Sandra (Lea Seydoux), a single mother with a precocious daughter named Linn (Camille Leban Martins), is at a vulnerable stage in her life. Sandra’s job as a translator has set into a routine. Her beloved father Georg (Pascal Greggory) is slowly being eaten away by Benson’s Syndrome.

Georg has lost his sight and will soon lose his bearings, leading to rounds of care homes that will be familiar to anybody who has had to look after ailing parents. A chance encounter with old friend Clement (Melvil Poupaud) keeps Sandra going. The passionate affair has its complications, which are compounded by Georg’s increasingly precarious situation.

Cinematographer Denis Lenoir, who has previously collaborated with Hansen-Love on her Things to Come (2016) and Bergman Island (2021), keeps his framing simple and unfussy. Quick cuts between sequences map the passage of time. This...

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