One Fine Morning

The second movie in my double feature yesterday was One Fine Morning at the Broadway.  Unfortunately, I was a bit underwhelmed by it.  Sandra Kienzler (Lea Seydoux) is a young widow working as an interpreter in Paris while raising her pre-teen daughter Linn (Camille Leban Martins), who is growing up and starting to pull away from her, and caring for her father Georg (Pascal Greggory), who is suffering from a neurodegenerative disorder and will soon require more supervision that she can provide.  She becomes reacquainted with her husband's old friend Clement (Melvil Poupaud) and eventually begins a passionate affair with him despite the fact that he is married and has a child.  She wants a commitment from him but he is unwilling to hurt his family.  Sandra deals with these losses by choosing to celebrate the little moments that bring her happiness.  Seydoux gives a lovely performance filled with quiet desperation as she gets on with the duties of her life (there are so many scenes of her walking and taking public transportation from place to place) but I found her character's passive resignation to the realities of life, while relatable, to be very depressing.  Also, while there are some incredibly poignant scenes, such as when Sandra and her mother (Nicole Garcia) and sister (Sarah Le Picard) try to convince Georg that he needs to go to a care center, the action becomes repetitive and I found my mind wandering many times (in all fairness I was really tired when I watched this).  Like most of Mia Hansen-Løve's films, this is beautifully shot and features an atmospheric score but, in my opinion, nothing about it is extraordinary enough to warrant all of the praise that it has received.  It didn't really appeal to me and I wouldn't recommend it.