VIFF 2022 | Léa Seydoux Awakens 'One Fine Morning'

"How could a body like yours have remained asleep for so long?"

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2022—French auteur Mia Hansen-Løve crafts another heartbreakingly real yet breezy romantic drama. Starring Léa Seydoux as a young widowed single mother, the partially autobiographical One Fine Morning (aka Un beau matin) tells a bittersweet, slice-of-life Parisian tale revolving around a passionate extramarital affair.

Seydoux's professional translator Sandra keeps busy raising her eight-year-old daughter Linn (Camille Leban Martins) and taking care of her ill, elderly professor father (Pascal Greggory) whose mental faculties are rapidly deteriorating due to a neurological disease. When she runs into Clément (Melvil Poupaud), a married friend from her past, she cannot help but fall for his charms despite him not being ready to leave his family to be with her.

One Fine Morning’s naturalistic style emphasizes Seydoux's enchanting portrayal as a woman stuck speaking for other people while suppressing her own emotions and tragically finding love with someone who is inherently incapable of committing to being with her but makes her feel wanted nonetheless.

Hansen-Løve resists the inherent melodrama of her material despite the nature of her protagonist's personal problems, grief, and central love affair. Her briskly intimate film offers another wondrous piece of everyday life told through a subdued but emotional relationship drama anchored by Seydoux's quietly heartwrenching performance.

One Fine Morning screened at the 2022 Vancouver International Film Festival as part of the Special Presentations series. It also screens at the VIFF Centre starting February 10th.


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