One Fine Morning (Un Beau Matin)

 

Writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve

Léa Seydoux with the director

ONE FINE MORNING (Un Beau Matin)                B+                                                           France  Great Britain  Germany  (112 mi)  2022  d: Mia Hansen-Løve

Premiering at Directors’ Fortnight at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, Mia Hansen-Løve describes her films as “imagination and experience meeting,” as they tend to be about women who find themselves on a journey of discovery during pivotal moments in their lives, reflective of her own personal experience, a practice she has established throughout her career with films like All Is Forgiven (Tout est pardonée) (2007), Goodbye First Love (Un Amour de Jeunesse) (2011), Eden (2014), Things to Come (L'avenir) (2016), and Bergman Island (2021), where this story was written just before the death of her father, exploring the lasting impact of such an imprinting relationship.  Both of Hansen-Løve’s parents were philosophy professors, with her father also working as a translator, while she studied German and minored in philosophy at university, with this film establishing profound philosophical implications that mirror her own journey, yet she’s one of the few filmmakers to offer a deeply meditative portrait of humanity with such a light touch.  Producing gentle slice-of-life films, shot on 35mm by Denis Lenoir, who also shot her three previous films, this features a woman in her thirties who works as an official interpreter during a turning point in her life, having lost her husband years earlier, raising her young daughter alone in the bustling city of Paris, yet two life-changing events collide with a resounding impact, the declining health of her father, a longtime professor debilitated from a neurodegenerative disease, no longer able to care for himself (her father suffered from the same ailment), and romantic sparks from a lifelong friend who is unhappily stuck in a loveless marriage, offering sober reflections on loss and separation while simultaneously a new love develops.  Often blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, with a flair for subtle nuances and precise observation, Hansen-Løve’s films are built by establishing rhythms of life, using narrative strands to establish character, much like a short story writer, creating a naturalistic language of her own that is tender and poetic, designed to establish empathy, and can be uniquely transformative, bearing some resemblance to the meticulous detail of André Téchiné, a master technician whose elegant films are similarly actor-forward and delve into the complexities of human emotion and relationships.  There’s also a minimalist simplicity to this film that resembles the tender father-daughter relationship in Ozu’s Late Spring (Banshun) (1949), both offering a haunting glimpse of life without adding documentary detail.  In an interesting aside, the lead protagonist is a translator of the works of Annemarie Schwarzenbach, a Swiss author who wrote in German, reading her published letters to Klaus Mann, one of Thomas Mann’s children, which is the subject of Mia Hansen-Løve’s next film project, something percolating for about fifteen years, developing an obsessional interest, turning into a made-for-TV miniseries (The Flame), though Hansen-Løve acknowledges she doesn’t even own a television.  This film was written with Léa Seydoux in mind, a generational French actress who typically exercises emotional restraint, which was evident early on in films like Christophe Honoré’s La Belle Personne (The Beautiful Person) (2008) and Rebecca Zlotowski’s Belle Épine (2010), before becoming a breakout international star after the success of Abdellatif Kechiche’s controversial Palme d’Or winning film Blue Is the Warmest Color (La Vie d'Adèle, Chapitres 1 et 2) (2013), the first to award the prize not only to the director but the two lead actresses as well.  Seydoux reported the male director’s style was overly abusive during the sex scenes, and repetitive, taking ten days to complete a lengthy sex scene, making her feel like a prostitute, so Hansen-Løve was very protective of her (Mia Hansen-Løve Denounces Hollywood's Sex Scenes), acknowledging she is an extremely shy actress, so she worked to establish a degree of safety and trust before shooting the kissing and graphic sex scenes, where it’s significant to point out that women filmmakers demonstrate a different awareness in this area, with Seydoux praising the director afterwards, insisting, “Mia has a remarkable blend of precision and sensitivity.”  While Hansen-Løve acknowledges she finds it much easier to direct women, making films exclusively with female protagonists since 2015, Seydoux has rewarded her with one of her finest performances, where the self-contained, raw emotion on display is the centerpiece of the film, allowing larger issues to fully penetrate on a deeper scale.   

Sandra Kienzler (Léa Seydoux in an unglamorous role wearing no makeup, with a short-cropped, Jean Seberg-style pixie haircut), lives with her young 8-year old daughter Linn (Camille Leban Martins), who still sneaks into her mother’s bed at night to snuggle, exhibiting a warm and affectionate relationship, where it’s clear they enjoy each other’s company, doing projects together, seen picking her up after school, while also making regular visits to grandparents, including the director’s own 98-year-old grandmother with all her mental faculties still intact, and despite things physically breaking down over time, she refuses to be viewed with pity, and her father Georg, played by an aging Pascal Greggory, who once appeared as an effusive talker and jealous love interest in Éric Rohmer’s PAULINE AT THE BEACH (1983).  Georg has an established reputation in academia as a renowned German literature and philosophy professor, a man who values “clarity and rigor,” but his health has taken a sharp turn for the worse, diagnosed with Benson’s syndrome, a creeping brain deterioration already affecting his ability to read and write, leaving him nearly blind, including symptoms of dementia, where he’s having a hard time living on his own, unable to complete his own thoughts, but Sandra patiently cares for him with a noticeable tenderness, often completing his sentences, but he’s already exhibiting extreme signs of forgetfulness, needing guidance for every mundane activity, like eating or going to the bathroom, while there’s a heartbreaking sequence where she has to instruct him how to open the door.  While in the park with Linn, she runs into an old friend of her husband, Clément, Melvil Poupaud, who once starred as a young heartthrob in Éric Rohmer’s A Summer's Tale (Conte d'été) (1996), having shed his boyishness yet still maintaining a middle-aged charm, as the director establishes a rhythm alternating between beautiful and sad moments, with Sandra going through a roller coaster ride of constantly shifting emotions.  Their troubled romance subverts the norm, becoming a messy and unvarnished affair filled with unpleasant twists and turns, resembling our own troublesome lives, where there’s always an unwelcome or unexpected intrusion.  His job as a chemical cosmologist takes him to the ends of the earth, having recently returned from Antarctica, studying extraterrestrial meteorite dust left around the globe, (5200 tons of meteorite dust falls to Earth every year), where the extended time away from home has put a strain on his marriage, yet they manage to joke around over who kissed the other first, igniting a torrid love affair, her own avenue of escape from the brutal reality of her father’s disease, though he yo-yo’s back and forth dividing his time between the two women, unable to break away from his wife and young son.  Adding to the distress, Sandra’s mother Françoise (Nicole Garcia), who divorced Georg ages ago but helps care for him, reveals that he can no longer live on his own and that they need to find a nursing home, a deeply depressing prospect, as it’s difficult to spend any time in these dreary facilities because patient care is not prioritized, so they are basically left on their own.  With no other options, however, he moves around through various facilities in an arduous odyssey searching for the right one, exploring public versus private, discovering beds are not readily available, revealing the shortcomings of available services, while at the same time, they have to pack up his belongings and try to figure out what to do with them, which is an emotionally exhaustive process.  This may be the most true-to-life of any of Hansen-Løve’s films, as it’s grounded in such distressing and emotionally frustrating experiences that just about everyone has to deal with, as parents grow old and infirmed, where this is about having compassion for old age, while also learning to deal with deadly diseases inevitably leading to tragic endings.  This film hides none of that, told in measured tones fluctuating between the summer and winter seasons, exposing the toll it takes on family members, ONE FINE MORNING (2022) | Official Clip YouTube (49 seconds), yet paring this traumatic experience with the Madame Bovary consequences of adultery, while reserving all moral judgement, makes this feel distinctly French.  There are joyous moments as well, like when Sandra and Clément take a break from having nonstop sex in her cloistered apartment and visit an art museum, where she blends in with Monet’s Water Lilies at the Musée de l'Orangerie (Seydoux appears in a Louis Vuitton ad in the same location), or the affectionately drawn mother-daughter moment when Sandra asks Linn for a lick of her ice cream and then steals the whole cone, or the hilarious Christmas Eve family reenactment of the arrival of Santa and his reindeer to the delight of giggling children who are discreetly tucked away and listening with their ears to the door.

Hansen-Løve is known for compassionate character studies, and here they are vibrantly created, filled with personality and charm, especially Françoise, an aging 60’s radical who still thrives on disruptive and often illegal civil disobedience protests with Extinction Rebellion, adding a jolt to her personality, though Sandra at one point indicates she’s not particularly trustworthy, all of which gives her a distinctive edge.  Sandra and Clément can be exhilarating together, featuring scintillating dialogue and naturalistic sex scenes, but then they’re bogged down by issues with his family, who we never see, with the camera remaining focused upon Sandra, who is caught between hope and disappointment, staying fixated on her phone waiting for a response from him, One Fine Morning Movie Clip - I Love You (2023) YouTube (1:02).  Her job as a French-German-English interpreter takes her into formal diplomatic sessions taking place in closed-door parliamentary meetings, her profession isn’t reliant upon one culture or language, embracing a larger world sensibility, so there’s a curious cinematic reference when we see Sandra in a theater watching Brigitte Helm in the Hanns Schwarz German silent drama THE WONDERFUL LIES OF NINA PETROVNA (1929, which allows her to be seen in a silent setting.  Yet one of the most dramatically compelling sequences happens at a Memorial tribute commemorating the Normandy D-Day landing (D-Day: The Allies Invade Europe), a chilling historical reminder, and while the scene is short and compact, probably just a minute or so of screen time, the power of sacrifice still resonates with its hair-raising implications.  At the nursing home, Georg talks constantly about his girlfriend Leila (Fejria Deliba), seen only briefly, and while she visits regularly, he can be seen wandering the halls searching for her, as she’s the only one he actually remembers, having forgotten everybody else, including his daughter, who is completely devoted to him.  Sandra finds a notebook her father used to keep track of his declining health, which reminds him of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, an astonishing and somewhat surreal revelation, feeling trapped in the illness, like being caught in an abyss where there is no beginning and no end.  She also identifies a rough manuscript for the memoirs he always intended to write, which she reveals to her family during a Christmas dinner, noting the title of one of the notebooks was written in German, Um einem schönen Morgen, which translates to One Fine Morning, with this film serving as a transmitted completion of that unwritten work.  Included in the director’s submitted ballot for the once per decade 2012 BFI Sight and Sound poll for greatest films, Mia Hansen-Løve, listed again on her 2022 ballot, (All voters - Sight and Sound), she includes Maurice Pialat’s The House in the Woods (La Maison des Bois) (1971), an expansive six-hour film made for French television, yet it unfolds with a literary style, using a recurring musical theme that plays at the end of each of the 7 chapter headings.  She employs a similar device here, where a recurring musical theme feels like pages turning in a book, Jan Johansson - Liksom en herdinna (Official Audio) - YouTube (2:57), borrowing this theme from Bergman’s THE TOUCH (1971), also featuring an adulterous affair, with suggestions that music carries with it the memories of those associated with it.  In similar fashion, there’s a beautiful moment where Sandra, looking at her father’s extensive library collection with complete editions of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Kafka, his most prized possessions that took a lifetime to accumulate (actually filming her own father’s books), confesses “I feel closer to him around his books than when I’m around him.”  This association lingers well after death, as these memories are our way of holding onto those we cherish.  Perhaps the most heartbreaking moment occurs when she brings her father a CD player, allowing him to listen to his favorite music, yet when she plays his most beloved piece, Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 20 in A, D.959 - 2. Andantino YouTube (7:17), he recognizes it instantly, but quickly needs her to shut it off, as it’s too painful for him, written with the composer’s knowledge that his death was imminent, playing again in her head during the bus ride home.  It’s a tragic reveal, as he’s already lost his ability to read, which he valued more than anything, where all that’s left is a further descent into forgetfulness.  Charged with understated filmmaking, the subtle yet poignant power of this film offers clear insight into death and aging, yet it’s never overwrought or melodramatic, interjecting humor in the most improbable moments, offering a surprising amount of clarity that few other films can offer, making beautiful use of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica in an eye-opening panoramic view of Paris from the dome lookout, ending with a film-defining song, Bill Fay - Love Will Remain (Official Audio) - YouTube (2:24).

Summer of '85 (Été 85)

 

Director François Ozon

Ozon with Félix Lefebvre (left) and Benjamin Voisin

 

SUMMER OF ‘85 (Été 85)                      C+                                                                           France  Belgium  (100 mi)  2020  d:  François Ozon

Opening in French cinemas on Bastille Day, a candidate for the best opening credits sequence of the year, a curious confessional accentuated by The Cure’s In Between Days In Between Days (Remastered) YouTube (2:58) exploding onto the scene at an idyllic sunny beachside location on the English Channel in Normandy, but all goes downhill from there, a teen gay love story turning morbid, lacking humor and the devlish wit Ozon is known for, becoming, unfortunately, just another film.  Adapting Aidan Chambers’1982 young adult novel Dance On My Grave, the film was initially going to be called Summer of ’84, but Robert Smith, lead singer of The Cure, refused to grant permission to use his song, as it was actually released in 1985, so Ozon changed the name of his film.  Set in Le Tréport, a picture postcard location surrounded by giant cliffs, 16-year old Alex (Félix Lefebvre) is seen in the opening scene getting arrested, but in voiceover we hear his thoughts, “I must be mad.  I should have known all along if your hobby is death, you must be mad…Don’t take me for a psycho.  Corpses are not my thing.  What interests me is Death, with a capital D…Actually, one corpse had a terrible effect on me.  That’s what I’m telling you about.  If Death doesn’t interest you…if you don’t want to know about what happened to him and me, and how he became a corpse, you’d better stop right there.  This is no story for you.”  Cut to The Cure.  The sun, the colors, the perfectly placed lighthouse, and the extraordinary beauty of the sea offer a Rohmeresque view of the world where people meet and fall in love, often seen frolicking in the ocean, as it’s their summer playtime, beautifully shot on Super 16mm by Hichame Alaouie.  Appropriately enough, Alex borrows a friend’s sailboat and spends a carefree afternoon sunning himself in the breeze, but an instant summer squall changes his fortune, with heavy winds and a lightning storm quickly upon him, desperately trying to rehoist the sails, but the boat capsizes, leaving him in the drink calling for help.  Like the answer to his prayers, David (Benjamin Voisin), just two years older, boldly makes a beeline directly towards him, like the arrival of the cavalry (“He’s the future corpse”), calmly instructing him how to turn the boat over for a tow back to shore, then welcoming him into his home, where his overly affectionate mother (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) literally strips him of his wet clothes just minutes after meeting him, favorably inspects the merchandise, then sends him into a hot bath, purring “You’re so cute.  I could eat you up!  My adorable little bunny.”  So far, so good, with everything looking promising, though David and his mother appear to come on a bit strong, but they’re simply exaggerated examples of the French sensibility, both still reeling from the death of her husband, so they’re trying to make the best of a new friendship.  Alex’s parents, in stark contrast, are much more aloof, showing their concern by worrying when he starts coming home late.  Curiously, Ozon was a teenager growing up in this era, a kid similarly drawn to a morbid obsession with death and darkness, so there had to be some personal identification. 

In an aside, Alex is reaching an age where he has to choose between continuing school or finding work, counseled by one of his teachers, Mr. Lefèvre (a completely unrecognizable Melvil Poupaud), who admires his writing, demonstrating a flair for originality, wishing he’d continue with his studies.  While his father would like him to come work for him, his mother just wants him to be happy, so he’s at an impasse, with David filling the void, as they go everywhere together, meeting night after night, riding together on his motorbike, where David is a reckless speed demon, becoming a whirlwind romance, otherwise known as a summer fling.  For Alex, however, things not only get heated, but extremely serious, as he’s certain this is the man of his dreams literally walking into his life, where there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for him, utterly devoted, though also perhaps overly naïve.  When David rescues a drunk off the main street, preventing a sure accident, it doesn’t end there, as he walks him all the way to the safety of the sea, leaving him in an isolated but protected area.  Even after Alex returns home for the night, David spends several more hours “checking up” on this rescued curiosity, suggesting he doesn’t mind playing the field.  While Alex doesn’t quite know what to make of it, more confused than anything, there’s no mention anywhere of AIDS, the deadly scare which captured the headlines of the era, particularly lethal in the gay community, yet they’re right back at it the next night, dancing like there’s no tomorrow in the clubs to a strobe light effect of changing lights, once more ecstatic in each other’s arms, set to the music of Rod Stewart’s “Sailing,” Rod Stewart - Sailing 1975 HQ - YouTube (3:46), where every day is a new adventure.  Simultaneous to this budding love affair, with David already identified as the corpse in the opening segment, the story jumps back and forth in flashback, as the police are conducting an investigation into his death, with Alex high on their lists of suspects, but he refuses to talk to anyone, including a social worker compiling her own report, getting nowhere with him.  The key, supposedly, is to get Alex to work with his teacher Mr. Lefèvre, who is proposing he write his thoughts, as they’re often easier than saying them.  Early in the film Alex meets Kate (Philippine Velge), an Engish student studying in France, cute and overly friendly, speaking expert French.  When they run into her again, she is welcomed into the team, like one of The Three Musketeers, but Alex immediately notices a shift in tone, as everything starts going downhill, with David immediately showering her with affection, leaving Alex the odd man out, feeling not only disrespected, but scorned in love, leaving behind a sour aftertaste.  The two boys get into a jealous dispute afterwards, with Alex steaming out in a huff after being called “boring,” as David has evidently grown tired of him and is ready to move on.  Not long afterwards Alex sees a news report on television identifying David as the crash victim in a serious road accident.    

Too much of this film is spent in the tailspin, literally dwelling on the aftereffects of personal anguish and grief, with Alex feeling guilty about his actions, thinking he may have caused the death.  While this may have been the main thrust of the novel, exploring death and all its ramifications, especially from the point of view of a young teen who is still on the verge of becoming an adult, the cinematic effect is morbidly dreary, as Alex alone can’t carry the picture.  David was the more dominant of the two, much more active and spontaneous, partnering with his eccentric mother, both generating most of the energy, with Alex passively commenting upon it through voiceover.  By himself, however, all the air seems to have dissipated, while we’re basically watching a kid feel sorry for himself, going through the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross stages of grief, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross - Fields and Dennis LLP (pdf).  More than anything, it appears, the death allows Alex to explore his own gayness, which also goes through various developmental phases, The Cass Model of Gay/Lesbian Identity Development (pdf), yet what’s worse is his inability to offer the proper respect to David’s mother, who has catastrophically lost her husband and son in short order, which is the film’s biggest tragedy, yet is completely overlooked by his own coming-of-age drama, becoming the film’s biggest deficiency, as it’s essential to offer help and consolation, despite her open objections, blaming him for her son’s death, but it never happens.  Instead Alex continues to think only about himself, which is considerably less interesting, becoming something of a farce, with Alex needing to see the body, as he was never able to pay his last respects, concocting a harebrained scheme with Kate to appear at the morgue in drag, assuming the role of a woman, donning a wig, shaving his legs, thinking that would make the staff more sympathetic, but his deplorable behavior is stunning, perhaps meant as dark and morbid humor, as it appears right out of a Monty Python skit, where one could imagine John Cleese jumping on a naked corpse with a flurry of kisses, representing the epitome of bad taste.  Afterwards, Alex is seen riding through town on his bicycle in drag, arriving home with a dress in tatters, much to the shock of his mother, claiming it immediately reminded her of Uncle Jackie, someone in the family no one talks about, who her husband abhors.  Alex, of course, immediately takes an interest in Uncle Jackie.  This weaving in and out of his own budding sexual identity is continually overshadowed by the tragic death of his friend, feeling somehow less important, as Alex is simply too bland a character, unable to generate any real screen enthusiasm.  Yet the fact remains that’s the storyline, assisted admirably by Kate, who remains upbeat and supportive throughout, his only real friend, eventually confessing everything to her, as the floodgates suddenly open through his writing, becoming the story we are witnessing.  Ozon has always had a flair for originality and invention, and this suffers from a lack of his own original material, feeling bogged down by someone else’s limitations, where standing in stark contrast is In the House (Dans La Maison) (2012), a student writing exercise that blossoms into a ridiculously innovative film, with readers, in this case his disinterested, bourgeois English teacher and wife, devouring every page, craving more, literally inhabiting each new page of the developing story.