'One Fine Morning' explores grief and love with understated self-assurance

Sandra (Lea Seydoux) lives in Paris with her daughter Linn (Camille Leban Martins) and navigates an affair with her dead husband's married friend (Melvil Popaud), and the worsening medical condition of her father (Pascal Greggory)...

Although that synopsis may seem like 'One Fine Morning' is a slight thing, so much of it is made up of small moments that eventually coalesce into this full tapestry of a life. Sometimes, we see Lea Seydoux make dinner or walk up Parisian streets, but the camera captures the whole scene including her expression and it tells so much. Sometimes, she looks lost and unhappy, other times happy and pensive. It's so rare in mainstream movies to have that kind of space and confidence to let a scene breathe and let a character just be.

It speaks to how assured Mia Hansen-Løve's direction is, that some scenes just naturally peter out but it never feels like there isn't a presence behind the camera calling 'cut'. Instead, the flow of the story, like the flow of life, just moves on. The relationship at the core of 'One Fine Morning', between her father and her lover, moves in similar waves. As his health deteriorates, she moves him from place to place to try and care for him. Likewise, her lover is still married and is unable to cleanly move to the next state of their relationship.

It's entirely sympathetic to their plight, and that kind of empathy is something you only really see in a French story like this. There's a subtlety to it, that none of the characters fly off the handle when they're spurned, but it still holds a real emotional impact. It's also fascinating to see how Lea Seydoux is interpreted on screen by not only a woman director, but a French woman director. When we see her in the likes of 'No Time To Die' or 'The French Dispatch', she's almost a parody - icy, aloof, speaking in clipped sentences and throwing dagger stares down the lens. Here, however, she laughs easily and articulates what's important to her and how she feels. There's a beautiful moment when, discussing her father's collection of books, how she recognises that the physical state is only an envelope, but that the things he loved and the things he read are more a part of his soul.

'One Fine Morning' may move at a leisurely place, and the absence of a strict structure around it may prove unwieldy to some, but it's a beautifully realised, heartfelt examination of the pain of love and loss, and the romance of a time and a place that feels like it's slowly disappearing from view. In the end, the trio of characters look out over the city and try to find their home. It's not immediately clear where it is, but they're looking for it together.