18th Century, pre-Revolution France. Jeanne Bécu (Maïwenn), the illegitimate daughter of a monk, hungers for culture and pleasure, and is determined to escape her commoner upbringing. With charm and sharp wit, she builds a reputation as a skilled courtesan and her benefactor, the Comte du Barry (Melvil Poupaud) grows rich through her amorous encounters. Wishing to present her to the widowed King (Depp), a renowned womaniser, the Comte orchestrates a meeting through the influential Duke of Richelieu (Pierre Richard).

For Jeanne and Louis, it’s intoxication at first sight; soon the King, rediscovering his appetite for life, anoints her as his new favourite. Unapologetically ignoring propriety and etiquette, with the help of his valet La Borde (a scene-stealing Benjamin Lavernhe), Louis moves her into his Versailles palace, sparking both derision and scandal… and jeopardising relations with the newly-arrived Marie Antoinette (Pauline Pollmann), the Austrian queen-in-waiting…

Finding mordant delight in the intrigues and rituals of high court life, JEANNE DU BARRY is a visual feast – sumptuously filmed in 35mm on location at Versailles and featuring majestic costumes and production design. In tracing a passionate woman, guilty only of trying to rise above her station, Maiwenn delivers an exuberant and sensitive portrait of class, ambition and both the rewards and risks of living in the public eye.
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Sandra (Seydoux) lives in a small apartment in Paris with her eight-year-old daughter. Her parents have long separated, and Sandra regularly visits her father, Georg (Pascal Greggory), an academic whose health has begun to deteriorate. Whilst she and her strong-willed mother (Nicole Garcia) struggle to agree on finding Georg a safe place to live, Sandra unexpectedly reconnects with an old friend, Clément (Melvil Poupaud). A passionate relationship begins to form, but not without repercussions.

Hansen-Løve, so finely observant of the small nuances of human interaction, weaves autobiographical elements into this delicate and heartfelt story of familial and romantic connections, and finding strength against challenging odds. Seydoux is radiant as her lead, bringing tremendous warmth and empathy to her role and the film as a whole.

Enthusiastically embraced by both critics and audiences as one of the best films of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, ONE FINE MORNING is, quite simply, French cinema at its finest.
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