Lea Seidu in Mia Hansen-Love’s “One Beautiful Morning”: Film Review | skin 2022

A beautiful Parisian; His sick teacher father; Your married girlfriend; The wall-to-wall shelves are full of books. On paper, it looks like a narrative checklist for counting many French films. But miraculously silent A good day (Un beau Matin)Writer and director Mia Hansen-Love and her presenter Lea Seidou give the old man a new feel again.

The two-day directors sidebar debut, while a wonderful choice for competition, is an immensely satisfying collaboration that finds both author and star further honing their places among the greats in their field.

Hansen-Love 2021 Highlights Bergman Island It may have been conceptually more ambitious, but his new film is more emotionally challenging: a return to the heartbreaking drama and insidious comedy of everyday life that the writer-director mastered in Isabel Hooper’s car in 2016. play. So under trump, Have a nice day You are preoccupied with the twists and turns of life as well as its unforeseen joys. And among other things, this is the latest evidence that various filmmakers are causing the passage of time, the changes that come with it, and how we struggle and try but end up adapting to Hansen-Love’s unwarranted harshness.

but play is a member, Have a nice day He chooses themes that Hansen-Love has explored throughout his career: mortality, heartbreak, parent-child relationships, the importance of independence, the power to sustain intellectual passion. This also applies to sex, philosophy, health and the transmission of culture from generation to generation. Which means secretly the film is about French society and French cinema: how it portrays and portrays the former and succeeds (through similar films, except recent releases). annals girlfriend s Paris, 13^me District) Renew, if not completely reinvent.

That’s a lot of baggage for a 112-minute film. But it’s due to Hansen-Love’s unique gifts Have a nice day It’s as warm and alive as he is, imbued with a brisk walk and a hint of humor, alternately sad and sweet. Much of what is happening is dark, but unlike many of his contemporaries in the art scene in Europe and the United States, Hansen-Love is not interested in punishing his characters or audiences; As always, the director vigorously avoids melodrama and problems. Despite the stress and suffering on screen, the ultimate mood is a sad calm, painted with a slightly insistent belief that yes, life really does go on.

Yes Have a nice day It is a story of hardship, and it also refers to a woman who, in the tales of Aesop and Lafontaine, “bends and does not break” like a reed, who endures turmoil by adjusting, shifting priorities, and allowing herself to have fun. to endure painful moments.

At the center of it all is Seidu, who directs the film and directs it, as did Huppert. play, increase. She’s a rare star who’s equally adept at ramping up power: her look can be toned down best of all, and she knows how to give the lines an incredible urgency, and tone them down enough to slide convincingly across the screen. Here he acts with deep insight and compassion, drawing you into his oppressed character so as not to make you a sad object for a second.

It may take you a few seconds to recognize Seidu in the opening scene as he walks down a Paris street towards the camera. With practical jeans, disheveled hair and a wa-wa-woom without acting, Sandra is far from Madeleine Swan, the intense love of Bond that the actress played in the last two works of the franchise.

Sandra, a single mother working with a school-age daughter (surprisingly shameless Camille Leban Martins), seems to be on autopilot since her husband died five years ago. The first few scenes show him running from date to date as he juggles a career as a translator (mentions and lectures translated from English and German into French), hiring and dropping out of school and various family commitments. The latter mainly refers to his father, George (moving on to Pascal Gregory), a philosophy professor battling neurodegenerative diseases.

Sandra’s mother in the flying left (Nicole Garcia, in a cheerful voice) -Georg has divorced and now remarried- and his sister (Sarah Le Picard), with Georg’s partner (Fejria Deliba) help Sandra enter the maze mad of his old age. institution to institution, less bitter on each front. But you can see Sandra in her tired eyes, her slightly slumped shoulders, and her stoic expression, which often shows that she’s ready to despair over someone else’s needs.

Sandra’s survival regimen is disrupted when one day she meets her son Clement (Melville Pupo), her old friend and her late husband. The supposed flirtation ends in a kiss and then a full-on romance. Clement is married but unhappy, and his and Sandra’s relationship develops with tender sensuality, followed by a sense of extreme insecurity: two people desperately find much-needed relief and release in each other’s bodies.

As Sandra grows closer to Clement and opens up to the kind of happiness she thought she left behind, she too, perhaps as an unconscious measure of self-preservation, begins to gently separate from her father. When a formed male figure disintegrates from her world, Sandra makes room for another.

That said, this is not the story of a woman subjugated by a man. While he may sometimes be disappointed in Sandra for putting up with Clement’s assertiveness, Hansen-Love is too interested in the human heart and mind reader to give fictional feminist kisses. Sandra is neither a martyr nor a victim; He is human and lonely, with aspirations stronger than practicality or pride. Seidu and Hansen-Love give you such a generous and accurate idea of ​​who Sandra is that you want for her what she wants at that moment, whether it’s a step behind Clement or a step forward.

There is emotional richness and authenticity in Seidu’s works, singling him out as the best. The actress gives Sandra decency, her attempts to do as much as she can for the people in her life, without delving into the process, from moment to moment fascinating – watch her qualities crumble in silent frustration when Clement tells her I’m back. for the wife; Or waves of admiration on her face when she received a loving message from him; Or the passionate devotion with which he listens to his father’s deviations, helps him complete his thoughts, looks for pieces of meaning to grasp.

Poupaud is also excellent in the play, emphasizing the earnest warmth beneath his character’s fluctuations. Clement is not a scoundrel or a scoundrel; He is a man who is overwhelmed by his feelings for Sandra but struggles with separation from his moral obligation (he more comfortably opens up to his career in cosmochemistry). The struggle between desire and duty has something in common with Clement and Sandra, even if they don’t realize it yet.

Directed by Hansen-Love, his trademark understated, clumsy elasticity, restrained naturalism, accented by more luxurious touches: an embrace between Sandra and Clement, reunited after a while in the cafe, choreographed with Classic Madic precision. . Hansen-Love portrays this moment and many others with Swedish composer Jan Johansson’s sophisticated yet melancholy and convenient subject matter, once again offering a masterclass in using music to understand audience response rather than dictation. (Other directors should also consider how this is resolved before the scene starts to procrastinate or sigh.)

In the movie (Hansen-Love meets DP Denis Lenoir), Have a nice day Conquer Paris with the tactics of the seasons, which will make you feel the damp chill of the winter fog and the dazzling heat of the summer sun. The vivid sense of place reflects the textured reality of the characters and their relationships, intricate, fully formed histories that you can guess even from their brief exchanges.

The fact that these people actually exist beyond the movie is testament to Hansen-Love, who… Have a nice dayHeroine: continues to develop, refines her craft and worldview, and delivers films as gifts to open.