It was absolute agony to stream through this film; it took me
multiple breaks to manage. Mia Hansen-Love is truly one of the
least talented filmmaker who has ever lived. Ever character
she has created is bland. Every scene she has shot is bland;
it must take an anti-genius to have made so many films without
a single memorable shot, without any trace of visual elegance.
For example: her father's room in the nursing home has dull, blank, greenish walls. You'd think this is making some sort of statement, but skip to the next scene, the Seydoux daughter character is making love in an apartment, and the walls are also a blank dull green. The holiday family gathering scene near the end is so astonishingly ineptly shot, it may as well be a home movie on a camcorder. In fact that description pretty much sums up Hansen-Love's directing career.
I have spent a chunk of time visiting nursing homes for the elderly in my youth. There was heartbreak, there was joy.
Never bland-bland-bland sort of "this is just another day."
The only saving grace of this film is the music, including the use of a Schubert piece found also in _Au Hasard Balthasar_.
Is she comparing Seydoux's character to the donkey? Or Pascal Gregory's? I'm probably giving the director too much credit, but at least this isn't her _Eden_, with music so awful you want to strangle someone.
A phenomenon like Hansen-Love's art-house "successful" career can only be possible because of art-house critics' cronyism and tolerance for mediocrity. I see so many French films in any given year, directed by women (often ex-actresses like Hansen-Love herself was), which are so much more challenging and exciting. Last year alone there was Sandrine Kiberlain's brilliant _A Radiant Girl_, a star-making vehicle for Rebecca Marder; Triet's _Anatomy of a Fall_ of course; the unique, Poetic, and deeply personal _Paris is Us_ by Elisabeth Vogler; _Suzanna Andler_ (by Benoit Jacquot to be sure, not a woman); _Full Time_; and more. Other than _Anatomy_, they are all ignored by critics while prosaic films like _One Fine Morning_ turn into magnets for praise. It is a sad state of affair.
For example: her father's room in the nursing home has dull, blank, greenish walls. You'd think this is making some sort of statement, but skip to the next scene, the Seydoux daughter character is making love in an apartment, and the walls are also a blank dull green. The holiday family gathering scene near the end is so astonishingly ineptly shot, it may as well be a home movie on a camcorder. In fact that description pretty much sums up Hansen-Love's directing career.
I have spent a chunk of time visiting nursing homes for the elderly in my youth. There was heartbreak, there was joy.
Never bland-bland-bland sort of "this is just another day."
The only saving grace of this film is the music, including the use of a Schubert piece found also in _Au Hasard Balthasar_.
Is she comparing Seydoux's character to the donkey? Or Pascal Gregory's? I'm probably giving the director too much credit, but at least this isn't her _Eden_, with music so awful you want to strangle someone.
A phenomenon like Hansen-Love's art-house "successful" career can only be possible because of art-house critics' cronyism and tolerance for mediocrity. I see so many French films in any given year, directed by women (often ex-actresses like Hansen-Love herself was), which are so much more challenging and exciting. Last year alone there was Sandrine Kiberlain's brilliant _A Radiant Girl_, a star-making vehicle for Rebecca Marder; Triet's _Anatomy of a Fall_ of course; the unique, Poetic, and deeply personal _Paris is Us_ by Elisabeth Vogler; _Suzanna Andler_ (by Benoit Jacquot to be sure, not a woman); _Full Time_; and more. Other than _Anatomy_, they are all ignored by critics while prosaic films like _One Fine Morning_ turn into magnets for praise. It is a sad state of affair.