Mill Valley Film Festival 45 (Oct. 6-176 2022)

[Chris Knipp]

MIA HANSEN-LØVE: ONE FINE MORNING/UN BEAU MATIN (2022)


MELVIL POUPAUD, CAMILLE LEBAN MARTINS, LÉA SEYDOUX IN ONE FINE DAY

[Thumbnail review]

Mia Hansen-Løve is in top form here, turning soap-melodrama material into something so rich, intelligent and emotionally direct the result far transcends the genres. Léa Seydoux, dramatically drab, is a lonely widow of five years, a single mom who works as an interpreter and raises a feisty daughter while she and Nicole Garcia, as her mother, her dad's no-nonsense ex-wife, struggle over time to find a decent nursing facility for her philosophy prof father (Pascal Greggory), who has been diagnosed with aneurodegenerative disease. And facing that, she meets unhappily married scientist Melvil Poupaud and a hot affair begins. They both fall passionately in love. Instead of the before-and-after structure of the filmmaker's best films, One Fine Morning drops that neat structural device to honor the intensity of its emotions, plunging into one relatively limited period of time and pushing forward its various threads to a bittersweet conclusion, uncertain, far from perfect, but as good as it can be. A terrific film. This is an intro: a full review will come at US release time.