The distancing with the narrative gave us some of last year's most beautiful films: Pacification in mind, of course, but also EO, where Skolimowski leaves his donkey the task of sewing his story. A beautiful morning is supposedly part of this kind of film: Mia Hansen-Løve tells the story of Sandra (Léa Seydoux) and her posture as a double mother. Mother of her eight-year-old daughter, but also mother of her own father. Eminent intellectual, Georg Kingsler (Pascal Greggory) is in fact amputated by his independence and mind, eaten that he is by a cruel neurodegenerative disease. To this story is added an old friend of Sandra, Clement (Melvil Poupaud), gradually becoming his regular lover.
The Anti-Kechiche
To talk aboutA beautiful morning, it might be interesting to take a step back in Seydoux's career and remember The Life of Adele. A sensory film, frontal, where everything goes through the image: sex and its sounds, love and lovelessness, creative impulses, class shifts... In a sense, A beautiful morning is the antithesis, just like the social milieu of the worker's son Kechiche found himself standing in the back of the middle medal Mia Hansen-Løve, daughter of two philosophy teachers. In the first film, the character of Seydoux confronts the materiality of things, while in the one that interests us today, she wanders in the felted corridors of her apartment, in the offices of her lover or in the streets of the beautiful neighborhoods of Paris.
A flagrant example? His father's entry into a medical environment, made necessary by his condition. Seydoux's social position – which is sometimes seen to work, but more often to walk around – extracts completely from the camboo. She is certainly confronted with the absences of her father and the image he refers to, but never with the concrete tangibility of his condition. When he has to go to the toilet while she is in the room at the same time, she is quick to call a nurse who is busy elsewhere. And when the latter insinuates that she could have taken care of it herself, Sandra replies that she « cannot ».
So two cinemas that we could call « cinema truth » – from naturalist cinema, if you dare to use the term "cassue" – you finally get two antithetical extremes, of which A beautiful morning would be the clean face, almost smooth. But is it still interesting?
What about the actors?
It must be noted that despite a XXL casting, the leadership of actors sometimes failed. The crises of tears Seydoux – brutal, irritating overplay – deactivate any empathy building in the spectator, and diminish many passages where the role of Pascal Greggory Could have been touching. Melvil Poupaud he gets out pretty well, without really pulling his pin from the game, while Nicole Garcia Infuses a little dynamism in the narrative with yet a horripilant role of bourgeoise buying a conscience alongside Extinction Rebellion (XR). A whole program! But as we will see, these problems clearly visible on the screen do not indicate that a problem of direction of actors...
Infernal Vortex
This requires an interest in the main theme ofA beautiful morning and know that he is largely inspired by what the director experienced. A perilous theme, since treated in length, wide and across, both in cinema and in literature: the progressive fragmentation of memory. That same year, it was the background of another French film: Vortexfrom Gaspar Noah. So what is the difference between these two film duos: Alex Lutz and his mother, and Léa Seydoux and his father?
The first is shown as it is, by a Gaspar Noah The filming device (the split screen), but above all hesitant to leave a long plan to its actors. They don't have to demonstrate to the camera, the explanation doesn't need to be verbalized, the feelings aren't underlined: you see what you're talking about.Alex Lutz lives in front of his mother suffering from senile dementia and, automatically, the viewer must take care of part of this suffering.
On the contrary, at Mia Hansen-Løve, the cuts are everywhere, the plans do not last, we do not understand immediately what ills is affected Sandra's father. He follows explanatory scenes – the scene between Sandra and the former student is the perfect example – and the well-artificial surges of emotion needed to build ex nihilo The distress of the character of Léa Seydoux. This is a shame because the exchanges of gazes between Seydoux and Greggory had enough to touch the viewer in the heart, if they were not systematically truncated by the cutting of the film.
Released woman
Nevertheless, it is clear thatA beautiful morning Hold the bar. With her bet on non-narrative and anti-spectacular, Mia Hansen-Løve still manages to bore us forever and it's not a small deal. She certainly sins on the emotional side, she never brings images that we would not have seen elsewhere as she does not revolutionize (that is the least one can say) her subject, but she will know from end to end hold her story without losing us. It will also largely avoid the pitfall of the tearing bourgeois film that could have been Brother and Sister or With Love and Struggle Last year...
Other momentumA beautiful morning, it is the character of woman whom incarnate Seydoux that makes – despite the higher reproaches – pleasure to see. A woman, a mother, a widow, who nevertheless manages to flourish as professionally as lovingly. A woman whose sexual desires do not diminish her to the hasty characterization – and yet still well present in the cinema – of hysterical nymphomaniac. A character built, with his own center of gravity, his own cracks, his own forces, whose writing is rejoicing. And just for that – but also for some nice moments of cinema – A beautiful morning It's worth a look.
Data sheet
DVD Zone B (France)
Publisher: Blaq Out
Duration: 107 min
Release Date: March 07, 2023
Video format : 576p/25 - 1.85
Soundtrack : French Dolby Digital 5.1 (and 2.0)
Subtitles French
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