Lea Seydoux and Mia Hansen-Love on the naturalism of One Fine Morning

French superstar Lea Seydoux revealed Bond director Cary Fukunaga was “a bit angry with me” over a final act scene.

One Fine Morning is in cinemas now. Picture: Palace Films

Lea Seydoux said she doesn’t always understand what a director wants.

“Sometimes I struggle a bit more. I don’t exactly know the subject, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I didn’t get it. And I’ve had moments where I had scenes I didn’t understand while I was filming them.”

One of those experiences was on the James Bond movie, No Time To Die, specifically the scenes at the end in the exotic garden when the superspy hero was tussling with the villain while Seydoux’s character, Madeleine Swann, was put in peril.

“[That was a scene] where I really struggled. I didn’t understand. And the director was a bit angry with me because he thought it was clear.”

But those misunderstandings never happened in the process of making the French actor’s latest film, One Fine Morning (in French, Un Beau Matin), written and directed by renowned filmmaker Mia Hansen-Love.

“I read the script, and in my mind, I saw the film.”

Seydoux and Hansen-Love was in lock step on the writer and director’s tender film about a woman named Sandra, who’s juggling her job, her daughter, her father’s failing health and a new, illicit romance.

Lea Seydoux stars in One Fine Morning.

Hansen-Love drew from her own experiences when her dad was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative illness, and that lived-in quality grounds One Fine Morning in pathos but also joy.

Hansen-Love said she felt she and Seydoux shares a kind of melancholy. She said, “There is a sadness about her that moves me a lot, because that sadness seems never acted, and that’s something I find very special about her.

“She has an innocence about her presence on screen and how she acts. When I filmed her later, I sometimes I had the feeling of filming an unprofessional actor. Her choices are very intuitive, she doesn’t intellectualise her character, she’s just being them when she’s there.”

There is a reciprocal knowingness in the working relationship between Hansen-Love and Seydoux. The actor said they barely even had to talk about the character or the film too much, it was “tacit”.

“I had a certain feeling about the film,” Seydoux said. “I tried to embody the character. I didn’t have a preconceived idea of what I was going to do. It was more like I felt the depth of it, and also because it’s [Hansen-Love’s] story and about her father, so she told me a bit about him, and I felt immediately I knew the film she wanted to do.”

Both artists praised each other for how natural and subtle each other’s approach was.

Seydoux said she felt the “extra responsibility” of playing a character that was partially based on Hansen-Love’s experiences. “Because I know she’s been through all those emotions. I wanted to be faithful to her feelings and her emotions.”

Hansen-Love acknowledged that all of her films have connections to her life – some elements are obvious, some are less so.

Mia Hansen-Love is an acclaimed French filmmaker. Picture: Palace Films

“But you can always find character that you could say are inspired by people who I’ve known or who are still part of my life. But always people I love, I never depict or make films with the memories of people I don’t like.

“I’m trying to be faithful to my experience of life. It’s doesn’t mean that it’s a documentary, it’s another way of finding the truth. You can use some elements of realities and some facts, but then for some reason, you can find other ways or shortcuts to reach that truth.

“Telling a story, making a film is always a reinvention of reality, it’s not like there is one single reality. If you’re going to tell a story in one hour and 50 minutes, it means you have to choose what you’re showing, what you’re not showing.

“Even if we call it realism, realism is totally fiction. Because it’s always reinvention. It has to do with our perspective on life.”

A prolific talent, Hansen-Love has made eight films since her feature debut in 2007 and she admitted to being exhausted after so many works in a row, which have included Bergman Island, Maya and Father of My Children.

The father character in One Fine Morning was inspired by Hansen-Love’s dad. Picture: Palace Films

She said she doesn’t feel she is able to start writing another project with an autobiographical element, she’s looking for something different to rejuvenate her creative force.

“I need to approach cinema a little bit differently because I’ve given so much of my life in my films, sometimes in a very direct way, and that makes me feel exhausted.

“I need to reinvent myself somehow. Especially after a film that is so close to my life about my father and about grief, I need to move to another place, another way in cinema.”

Her ongoing ambition is to ensure she keeps her faith in the art form, which she fears is dying.

“Less and less people go to the theatres and there’s a feeling that sometimes people are less and less interested in cinema.

“I hope I’m wrong and this is not the reality, but I’m worried that I may lose faith in myself as a director and in cinema in general. So, my only real desire, the only thing I deeply wish, is to keep this thing in me alive.”

One Fine Morning is in cinemas now

The writer travelled to Paris as a guest of Unifrance