One Fine Morning (2023)

Direction: Mia Hansen-Løve
Country: France 

In Mia Hansen-Løve’s romantic drama One Fine Morning, Léa Seydoux (Blue is the Warmest Colour, 2013; France, 2021) is Sandra Kienzler, a widowed, avid-for-love interpreter who finds herself at a serious emotional crossroads. She tries to cope with the anguish that stems from her father’s health deterioration and the joyful possibility of a new love. The film pulsates with desperate, even miserable passion as Sandra gets closer to Clément (Melvil Poupaud of Eric Rohmer’s A Summer’s Tale and Raul Ruiz’s Time Regained), a married old friend and cosmochemist who usually spends months away in Antarctica and the North Pole. They have one children each and their relationship is not without indecision and consecutive ups and downs.

Ingrained with melancholy and shot in 35 mm, the film doesn’t exactly take your breath away, but it’s not afraid to state that life can be often messy and unfulfilling. It’s a simple yet powerfully acted drama that flourishes because of the protagonists’ charisma. These two lonely souls manage to go beyond their existential ennui.

Hansen-Løve, who was partly inspired by her father’s illness and wrote the script when he was still alive, takes a more transparent approach in opposition to the more ambiguous tonalities of her last film, Bergman Island. One Fine Morning has a few floundering moments, especially those when illness is involved. And yet, with sorrowful tears in her eyes, Sandra keeps us connected with her irrepressible hope.

Bergman Island (2021)

Direction: Mia Hansen-Love
Country: France / Belgium / other

The excellent writing and directorial skills of Mia Hansen-Love (Father of My Children, 2009; Eden, 2014; Things to Come, 2016) are put in effect again in her latest drama, Bergman Island, a sensitive if knotted fiction that chronicles the ebb and flow in the relationship of a filmmaking couple visiting the island of Fårö in Sweden - home of the masterful director Ingmar Bergman for many years. 

Leaving their daughter behind, Chris (Vicky Krieps) and the much older Tony (Tim Roth) try to keep up with work. Insecure about her ongoing script, she opts to decompress in the company of a young film student from Stockholm with whom she visits a few local places of interest. Conversely, the self-confident Tony is an accomplished filmmaker who, after giving a masterclass, experiences a boring touristic Bergman Safari. Moreover, she tells him everything about her work, whose narration he listens with indifference, whereas he is secretive about his. These aspects are indicative that the couple is gradually growing apart.

Hansen-Love manages to squeeze both honest emotion and romantic intrigue out of the plot’s provocative fuzziness. Immersed in its cinematic motivation and conducted from a feminine perspective, the story transcends linearity and jumps into the abstract when Chris discloses her script about a filmmaker called Amy (Mia Masikowsaka) who reunites with her long-time love interest (Anders Danielsen Lie) in Fårö, decades after their first affair.

The film doesn’t pursue sentimental paths. It’s all nuanced, carefully presented with duality - also an indispensable element in Bergman’s work - and it doesn’t really click at the first blush. However, after a while, this imaginative dance of characters and plot ambiguities produce the desired effect. It takes time to settle but it’s ultimately rewarding as you sense the pressure of having to go through a whole creative process, the volatility of romantic feelings and the shaky balance between family and professional duties. It’s all presented under the bright light that shines over this Baltic Sea island’s countrified landscapes.

Things To Come (2016)

Directed by Mia Hansen-Love
Country: France / Germany

“Things to Come” is a pungent drama that links together Mia Hansen-Love and Isabelle Huppert, acclaimed French director and actress, respectively.
Last year, the latter was the protagonist in Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle”, receiving well-deserved accolades around the world for her brilliant performance. This year, she can only expect further praise since she reteamed with directors Hong Sang-soo in “Claire’s Camera” and Michael Haneke in “Happy End”.
Huppert excels once again under the direction of Hansen-Love, winner of a Silver Berlin Bear, who wrote the script with the actress in mind. Her previous film, “Eden”, was on my favorite list of 2014.

Her new film follows Nathalie Chazeaux (Huppert), a qualified high school philosophy teacher whose emotional strength is tested when her husband, Heinz (André Marcon), also a teacher, leaves her for another woman after 25 years of marriage. It was their children, Chloe (Sarah Le Picard) and Johann (Solal Forte), who forced him to choose between staying and departing when they found out he was seeing someone else.

The situation becomes even more stressful because Nathalie’s mother, Yvette (Edith Scob), is losing the battle against a severe depression and constantly attempting to kill herself. It’s kind of a relief when she finally accepts to dwell in a well-prepared, if costly, nursing home. 
And because bad things always come in threes, she is fired from the school she's been teaching for years.

All these setbacks would totally destroy a weak person, but Nathalie is something else. To quote her own words: ‘I’m fulfilled intellectually’; ‘I found my total freedom’. She suffers in silence as she seems to fully accept the unfamiliar situation she is in. There are no dramas. The only person she relies on to talk about her personal life is Fabien (Roman Kolinka), a former student who invites her for a farm he bought in the mountains. Although he considers her a bourgeois and pretends to be more radical than he really is, they are genuinely fond of each other.
Trying not to lose face, her eyes were soaked in tears with a painful ‘au revoir’ to Heinz’s beautiful beach house, where she used to spend her summers. 

By taking a good look at its narrative, one may think this is a heavy dark film, but it doesn’t work like that. After all, family is still there. One fundamental question arises, though. What would be of this woman if she had no children?

Even deserving all the praise for eschewing clichés and dramatic trifles, Hansen-Love could have suppressed a couple of scenes that felt contrived and unnecessary, like when a man harasses Nathalie at the movies. 
As for the rest, this character-driven accomplishment is powerful, portraying life’s contingencies with class, honesty, and an extraordinary sensibility.