The French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve became a festival fixture with films such as All Is Forgiven (2007), Father of My Children (2009) and more recently the Palme d’Or nominated Bergman Island (2021). My own favourite Hansen-Løve films include the pulsing Eden (2014) and the ruminative Things to Come (2016), the latter of which contains one of Isabelle Huppert’s finest screen performances. But in this, her latest Cannes prize winner, Hansen-Løve hits a career high note, delivering a quietly thoughtful and ultimately life-affirming portrait of the strange interaction between loss and rebirth. It’s a miraculous balancing act that pretty much took my breath away.
Léa Seydoux, whose own career encompasses everything from Palme d’Or winners to Bond blockbusters, lands the low-key role of a lifetime as Sandra, a thirtysomething widowed mother with a Jean Seberg À bout de souffle crop whose life is pulling in two very different directions. Her philosophy professor father Georg (Pascal Greggory) is suffering from Benson’s syndrome, a neurodegenerative condition that is causing his mind, vision and memory to fail. “His entire life was dedicated to thinking,” says the clearly distraught Sandra, a professional translator whose ability to intermediate is crucially failing her, and who increasingly feels “closer to my father with his books than with him”. Only his companion, Leïla (Fejria Deliba), seems truly able to reach Georg, who has even closed his mind to the beauty of a once-loved Schubert sonata – a heartbreaking moment.
At the same time, an encounter with old friend Clément (Melvil Poupaud), a “cosmo-chemist” who travels the world collecting space dust, sparks new romance in Sandra’s life. It’s an illicit affair (Clément is a married father) that reawakens feelings and physical passions she thought she had “forgotten” (“How could this body stay asleep for so long?” he marvels). Meanwhile, Sandra’s mother, Françoise (Nicole Garcia), seems to be enjoying a later-life renaissance, eagerly engaging with the modern world by going on nonviolent environmental demonstrations while her ex-husband is confined to care homes.