REVIEW: Petite Maman (2021)
Dec. 9th, 2023 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllPetite Maman (2021) Rated: U
Written and Directed by: Céline Sciamma
Starring: Joséphine Sanz, Gabrielle Sanz, Nina Meurisse, Stéphane Varupenne, Margot Abascal
Watched in French with English subtitles.
This was highly praised when it was first released and now that I’ve seen it myself (thanks All 4), I can’t but join in. In one way, it’s a simple story, full of realistic details, an eight year old girl, Nelly, befriends another girl of about her own age, Marion, they help each other build a hut (looked more like a wigwam to me) and talk their parents into letting Nelly stay overnight at Marion’s until having to split up. One is grieving for her grandmother and worried about her mother, the other is preparing for an operation. In another way it’s a profound story.
We and Nelly soon come to believe that, somehow, Marion is Nelly’s mother, who just left Nelly and her father to pack up her childhood home alone. The film doesn’t bother to explain how this timeslip or whatever it is happens. Like the eight year old heroine, we can see that young Marion’s house is the house Nelly’s mother grew up in, only furnished, not being cleared out, and that young Marion’s mother is the grandmother who has just passed away. There’s one trick where Nelly is sitting on the same chair in one kitchen in one timeline and then shifts to the same chair in the same kitchen in what young Marion calls ‘the future’.
Although the film is, well, metaphysical, it’s not at all fantastic, apart from the play of shadow that allows Nelly to see the ‘black panther’ that her mother claimed to have seen and feared when she was a child. Little Marion waves at Nelly like an eight year old girl living out in the country would do if she saw another girl who might help her build her den. The girls play games, the most elaborate being a pretend murder mystery play, and get on well. As soon as Nelly tells Marion, and Marion seems to believe her in the way that an eight year old about to turn nine would, their every conversation has even more meaning, as they discuss secrets, as little Marion considers her mother’s mortality and her future, that she’s interacting with her own future daughter - it’s certainly a distraction from worrying about the operation that will spare her needing a walking stick, which her mother uses.
Nelly, absorbingly played by a child actress (who must be related to the girl playing young Marion, given that they share a surname), has already had to face those questions. Her revelations to child Marion about adult Marion add further meaning to what I’d put down as solely grief. Well, almost, I did wonder whether the fact that Nelly’s parents were sleeping in separate beds, as we learned early on, was merely down to practicalities or a sign of strain on the relationship. Conversations and events that seem so simple and natural carry a much richer meaning. The girls tramp around the autumnal woods, even though Marion is meant to be careful in advance of her operation. Their last adventure together, where they row a little boat out in a lake to visit a man-made island, listening to ‘the music of the future’ is so emotional.
It's beautifully shot. I was aware of how the camera so often goes down to Nelly’s level, so we see the world, her grandmother’s house (the main setting) from her child’s view, except when there’s a wider shot of her in the woods or sitting in an empty room, and she’s usually bang in the middle of the frame. The house’s furniture is old-fashioned, little changed from 23 years ago – Marion’s mother kept everything, which is why the family have to stay so long to clear it out after her passing. The similar looking brunette girls wear the same coats, Nelly is in dark blue, Marion in burgundy. Director and screenwriter Sciamma was also responsible for costuming.
It all packs an emotional punch, from Nelly feeding and embracing her mother as they drive away from the hospital to the power of goodbyes in the shadow of death, to the perfect ending. In between, Nelly, who is at times clever for her age and wiser than the adults, expresses so much while being a totally convincing child probably facing her first real loss. She’s both child enough to fall asleep easily wherever she lays her head out of tiredness and to need carrying by adults, but old enough to be sensitive to the things that adults don’t say. This whole idea of a friendship between two little girls who need a friend, but are also a mother and daughter being able to meet as peers (when we have been reminded that daughters lose their mothers to the grave in the normal scheme of things) is movingly, tangibly, naturally and compellingly brought to life. (Although there are some things that felt so French – sure, you can sleep over at this child’s house when I’ve never met her parents and don’t even know her surname.)
And oh, the audacity of the moment where little Marion meets Nelly’s father, who will be her husband, when the two girls’ main concern is to wheedle him into letting Nelly stay one more day so she can have a sleepover at Marion’s. Marion thanks him for saying yes over Nelly’s shoulder in a gesture that you can almost imagine an adult Marion making, and yet it’s we and the situation who bring that understanding of what is on screen to a little girl thanking a grown man, her friend’s father, for yielding to them.
Written and Directed by: Céline Sciamma
Starring: Joséphine Sanz, Gabrielle Sanz, Nina Meurisse, Stéphane Varupenne, Margot Abascal
Watched in French with English subtitles.
This was highly praised when it was first released and now that I’ve seen it myself (thanks All 4), I can’t but join in. In one way, it’s a simple story, full of realistic details, an eight year old girl, Nelly, befriends another girl of about her own age, Marion, they help each other build a hut (looked more like a wigwam to me) and talk their parents into letting Nelly stay overnight at Marion’s until having to split up. One is grieving for her grandmother and worried about her mother, the other is preparing for an operation. In another way it’s a profound story.
We and Nelly soon come to believe that, somehow, Marion is Nelly’s mother, who just left Nelly and her father to pack up her childhood home alone. The film doesn’t bother to explain how this timeslip or whatever it is happens. Like the eight year old heroine, we can see that young Marion’s house is the house Nelly’s mother grew up in, only furnished, not being cleared out, and that young Marion’s mother is the grandmother who has just passed away. There’s one trick where Nelly is sitting on the same chair in one kitchen in one timeline and then shifts to the same chair in the same kitchen in what young Marion calls ‘the future’.
Although the film is, well, metaphysical, it’s not at all fantastic, apart from the play of shadow that allows Nelly to see the ‘black panther’ that her mother claimed to have seen and feared when she was a child. Little Marion waves at Nelly like an eight year old girl living out in the country would do if she saw another girl who might help her build her den. The girls play games, the most elaborate being a pretend murder mystery play, and get on well. As soon as Nelly tells Marion, and Marion seems to believe her in the way that an eight year old about to turn nine would, their every conversation has even more meaning, as they discuss secrets, as little Marion considers her mother’s mortality and her future, that she’s interacting with her own future daughter - it’s certainly a distraction from worrying about the operation that will spare her needing a walking stick, which her mother uses.
Nelly, absorbingly played by a child actress (who must be related to the girl playing young Marion, given that they share a surname), has already had to face those questions. Her revelations to child Marion about adult Marion add further meaning to what I’d put down as solely grief. Well, almost, I did wonder whether the fact that Nelly’s parents were sleeping in separate beds, as we learned early on, was merely down to practicalities or a sign of strain on the relationship. Conversations and events that seem so simple and natural carry a much richer meaning. The girls tramp around the autumnal woods, even though Marion is meant to be careful in advance of her operation. Their last adventure together, where they row a little boat out in a lake to visit a man-made island, listening to ‘the music of the future’ is so emotional.
It's beautifully shot. I was aware of how the camera so often goes down to Nelly’s level, so we see the world, her grandmother’s house (the main setting) from her child’s view, except when there’s a wider shot of her in the woods or sitting in an empty room, and she’s usually bang in the middle of the frame. The house’s furniture is old-fashioned, little changed from 23 years ago – Marion’s mother kept everything, which is why the family have to stay so long to clear it out after her passing. The similar looking brunette girls wear the same coats, Nelly is in dark blue, Marion in burgundy. Director and screenwriter Sciamma was also responsible for costuming.
It all packs an emotional punch, from Nelly feeding and embracing her mother as they drive away from the hospital to the power of goodbyes in the shadow of death, to the perfect ending. In between, Nelly, who is at times clever for her age and wiser than the adults, expresses so much while being a totally convincing child probably facing her first real loss. She’s both child enough to fall asleep easily wherever she lays her head out of tiredness and to need carrying by adults, but old enough to be sensitive to the things that adults don’t say. This whole idea of a friendship between two little girls who need a friend, but are also a mother and daughter being able to meet as peers (when we have been reminded that daughters lose their mothers to the grave in the normal scheme of things) is movingly, tangibly, naturally and compellingly brought to life. (Although there are some things that felt so French – sure, you can sleep over at this child’s house when I’ve never met her parents and don’t even know her surname.)
And oh, the audacity of the moment where little Marion meets Nelly’s father, who will be her husband, when the two girls’ main concern is to wheedle him into letting Nelly stay one more day so she can have a sleepover at Marion’s. Marion thanks him for saying yes over Nelly’s shoulder in a gesture that you can almost imagine an adult Marion making, and yet it’s we and the situation who bring that understanding of what is on screen to a little girl thanking a grown man, her friend’s father, for yielding to them.
