One Fine Morning Review: A Clear-Eyed Drama About Love and Goodbye [NYFF]

The woman in transition is French widow Sandra (Léa Seydoux), a professional translator raising her 8-year-old daughter, Linn (a mischievous Camille Leban Martins). Sandra has reached a devastating point in her adulthood. Her father (Pascal Greggory in a heartbreaking performance) is diagnosed with Benson Syndrome, a neurodegenerative disease. He fades from consciousness and wanders away in a mobile, mumbling shell of a man as he clings on for dear life for his memories. During a distressing incident, Sandra meets one of her former students and seems to stay the course with a smile. Then her face flushes and tears flow as she withdraws from the social situation.

Sandra meets an old friend, Clément (Melvil Poupaud), husband, father and cosmochemist (not an astronomer, because he constantly corrects people in a running gag). A passion is born between them. The spark of her love life and the fact that she witnessed the dissolution of her father's personality are not disparate episodes, but highly intertwined emotional events that follow one another. Seydoux is a winner in "One Fine Morning", appearing in every frame with blissful warmth. Whether Sandra takes her daughter to the park, tests her ailing father by regaining her memory, or immerses herself in the rapture of passion with her lover, we sense how Sandra's existential sadness and her quest for pleasure intersect. Her romance is not just a respite from the harrowing loss of her father, but a pursuit of living life to the fullest.