Critics’ reviews

One Fine Morning (2022)

29 reviews from 29 publications. Critics’ score 84: 16 positive, 1 mixed, 0 negative.

Back to our review of One Fine Morning

84
Positive
16
Mixed
1
Negative
0

The reviews for One Fine Morning are warm and closely bunched, with the great majority positive and only one mixed. The praise lands first on Léa Seydoux, whom nearly every critic singles out for a performance built on restraint, several calling it the strongest work of her career. Behind her, most critics credit Mia Hansen-Løve for handling a father’s decline and a married lover’s arrival with a light touch and no sentimentality, letting feeling rise out of ordinary routines rather than plotted turns. Sight and Sound is unusual in placing Pascal Greggory’s father, rather than Seydoux, at the film’s centre. The reservations are small and scattered: Paste finds the melancholy pervasive and the drama low-key, Deadline thinks the story slight if warm, and The Skinny notes a meandering plot that Seydoux has to hold together. Nobody argues that the film is anything other than accomplished; the disagreement is only over how much it adds up to.

Time Out
21 May 2022 · ★★★★★ · Anna Bogutskaya
100

The intimate drama explores romantic and familial love through a single mother's experiences with her father's decline and a new affair, avoiding sentimentality. Seydoux delivers a magnetic performance highlighting subtle emotional shifts.

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Empire
14 April 2023 · Ian Freer
90*

Hansen-Løve confirms her status as a filmmaker who finds magic in everyday life, family, and relationships. The film features a career-best performance from Seydoux and feels authentic and human.

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The AV Club
24 January 2023 · A- · Timothy Cogshell
90

The critic finds the film consistent with Hansen-Løve's canon—quiet, languidly paced, and beautifully composed—about family, friends, lovers, disappointments, and passions. It is bittersweet but mostly bitter, and lovely in its intimate, authentic portrayal of everyday circumstances.

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Evening Standard
14 April 2023 · Charlotte O'Sullivan
85*

Seydoux delivers an intoxicating performance as a woman balancing parental care and a passionate affair. The director excels at capturing hard-to-articulate emotions in a quiet, authentic portrait of family and personal life.

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Film Comment
· Clinton Krute
85*

The critic praises the film's radiant yet clear-eyed portrayal of grief and new love through an autofictional lens. Hansen-Løve's direction is singled out for its precise capture of everyday rhythms and avoidance of sentimentality.

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Los Angeles Times
9 December 2022 · Justin Chang
85*

The lucid, affecting film follows a widow through routines of caregiving and tentative romance, emphasizing incremental real-life drama over conventional arcs. Seydoux delivers one of the year's best performances through emotional reserve and naturalistic grace.

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The i Paper
13 April 2023 · Christina Newland
85*

The film offers a profoundly moving meditation on love, loss, and everyday life through subtle storytelling. Seydoux shines in a believable, sexy affair amid the challenges of family and illness.

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Little White Lies
13 April 2023 · 3/4/5 · Savina Petkova
80

Sandra navigates placing her father in a care home while rekindling an affair with a married man, with cinema offering moments of solace amid grief and desire. Hansen-Løve and Seydoux form an effective pairing in this intimate drama.

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Radio Times
· Emma Simmonds
80*

Sandra, a single mother and translator, deals with her father's neurodegenerative disease while starting an affair with a married friend. Hansen-Løve handles heavy emotional material with a light touch, emphasizing resilience and the coexistence of desire and loss.

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Slant Magazine
10 September 2022 · Pat Brown
80*

The review highlights the film's deceptively straightforward storytelling and light visual touch, tracking Sandra's juggling of caregiving, work, romance, and parenting with incisiveness. Seydoux gives a lived-in performance that captures vulnerability and strength amid inevitable change.

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The Independent
13 April 2023
80*

The critic praises the film's tender, understated exploration of a widow rediscovering desire amid family caregiving duties. Hansen-Løve is commended for rooting the story in everyday realities and philosophical undertones without sentimentality.

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Vulture
27 January 2023
80*

Hansen-Løve's matter-of-fact approach allows emotions to emerge organically from the unfussy drama, capturing the rhythms of everyday life and the fleeting nature of happiness. Seydoux's performance conveys a woman holding back a universe of feelings amid trauma and desire.

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IndieWire
20 May 2022 · festival review · David Ehrlich

The review calls it a sweetly affecting tale of a Parisian single mom who finds herself in the arms of a married friend, with Léa Seydoux lighting up the excellent new affair from Hansen-Løve.

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RogerEbert.com
27 January 2023 · Monica Castillo

The film quietly chronicles a single mother's juggling of caregiving for her ailing father, parenting her daughter, and navigating an on-and-off affair. Seydoux's performance captures the emotional reserve and quiet strength required amid everyday losses and small hopes.

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Screen Daily
20 May 2022 · festival review

A young mother copes with her father's gradual loss to illness while exploring new love, in a personal and empathetic drama. Seydoux gives a transcendent performance supported by strong turns from Greggory and others.

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Sight and Sound
23 May 2022 · festival review

The film portrays a single mother juggling care for her daughter and ailing father while beginning a new romance, in Hansen-Løve's characteristically understated style. Pascal Greggory's performance as the father anchors the emotional core.

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The Guardian
16 April 2023 · Peter Bradshaw

Hansen-Løve delivers a career high with a life-affirming portrait of loss and rebirth in this deeply personal story. The critic singles out Léa Seydoux’s masterclass in interiority as the widowed mother navigating new romance and her father’s decline.

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The Hollywood Reporter
20 May 2022 · festival review · Jon Frosch

The critic praises the quietly miraculous collaboration between Hansen-Løve and Seydoux, which makes familiar material feel fresh and emotionally complex. It highlights the film's understated poignancy in depicting life's curveballs alongside unforeseen joys.

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The New York Times
8 December 2022 · NYT Critic’s Pick · Manohla Dargis

Hansen-Løve reveals the sublime in ordinary moments as a single mother balances caring for her declining father and beginning a new romance. The delicacy with which these events interplay with modest daily life gives the film its unexpected force.

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The Telegraph
13 April 2023

A treat that is quiveringly emotional, radiant and smart, with Léa Seydoux delivering a potential career-best performance. The critic praises the raw, believable affair and the detail of the writing that lifts it above cliché.

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The Times
14 April 2023 · ★★★★☆ · Kevin Maher

A heartbreaking French melodrama of layered meaning with moments of ineffable sorrow and flashes of sensuality. The critic highlights Léa Seydoux’s surging intensity as she navigates her father’s degeneration and a passionate affair.

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Variety
20 May 2022 · festival review · Guy Lodge

Hansen-Løve returns to form with a gently moving character study of a single mother stretched between her child, sick father, and new lover. The film accrues subtle power through repetition and lived-in observation rather than tidy narrative arcs.

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The Playlist
20 May 2022 · festival review · Carlos Aguilar
85*

The critic highlights Léa Seydoux's versatile and incandescent performance in a layered portrait of a woman balancing grief, desire, and family duties. The film is described as bittersweet and engrossing in its depiction of impermanence and human emotion.

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Collider
10 September 2022 · B+ · Ross Bonaime
83

The film is a quiet yet emotionally powerful story of love, loss, and family that packs an unexpected wallop. Léa Seydoux's graceful, honest performance as a woman navigating her father's decline and a new romance is singled out for praise.

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Eye for Film
20 May 2022 · festival review · Richard Mowe
80*

The critic praises the film's portrayal of complex life experiences and commends Léa Seydoux's subtle and empathetic performance as she navigates personal challenges. The director's ability to create fully-fledged characters and explore themes of relationships and mortality is highlighted.

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The Skinny
10 April 2023 · ★★★★ · Carmen Paddock
80

The critic calls it a luminous character study with naturalism and effervescent dialogue. Seydoux's performance is singled out for holding the meandering plot together while navigating complex family and romantic dynamics.

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Paste
27 January 2023 · 6.8/10 · Jesse Hassenger
68

Mia Hansen-Løve's low-key drama about caregiving and an affair benefits greatly from Léa Seydoux's moody star power amid its bleak mood. The film's pervasive melancholy and understated handling of emotional conflicts are highlighted as key elements.

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Deadline
20 May 2022 · festival review · Damon Wise

The film offers a thoughtful character sketch of a single mother navigating love and family duties. It highlights Léa Seydoux's standout performance as the standout element in an otherwise slight but warm story.

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The Wrap
26 January 2023 · Katie Walsh

Hansen-Løve captures the challenges of caregiving and rediscovering love with grace and humanism. The critic singles out Léa Seydoux's remarkable performance for its honest and subtle emotional range.

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Ordered by the weight we give each publication, then by score. Scores are normalised to 100; * means inferred from an unrated review. Summaries are ours, not quotations; follow the links for the reviews themselves. How we rate