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.

France (2021)

Direction: Bruno Dumont 
Country: France 

Crisis - whether in its emotional, spiritual or self-confidence forms - was always a favorite topic of French filmmaker Bruno Dumont. After making interesting statements with Humanity (1999), Hadewijch (2009) and Camille Claudel (2013), he became more and more playful and eccentric yet less shocking with titles such as Slack Bay (2016) and the TV mini series L’il Quinquin (2014, 2018).

His new lurid and lugubrious satire, France, digs at the manipulative circus of modern journalism with biting sarcasm, and can be nearly deadly serious in some observations. Despite having Lea Seydoux spreading charm all over as France de Meurs, a celebrated TV journalist who quickly goes from disguised cynicism to tearful melancholy, Dumont unmanaged a few aspects in the last third of the film, which is so giddy, it verges on ennui.

This cynical portrait entertainingly stabs the media, the country, and, in part, itself by walking a line that often blurs good and evil. It never takes a clear position either, just like its protagonist refuses to answer if she’s left or right wing. And how her empowerment suddenly crumbles with a trivial incident! Seydoux has never cried so much in her entire career. The war scenes are often risible, and despite using archive footage of president Emmanuel Macron to its advantage, a good editing would only make it better. France is a bold move but hardly a successful one.