Celine Sciamma’s last film was the dazzling and widely acclaimed Portrait of a Lady on Fire in 2019, but she has been quietly making some of the best films in the last decade. In her latest feature, Petite Maman, Sciamma again teams up with Portrait cinematographer Claire Mathon to create another gorgeous and captivating film.
This has been described as a fantasy and that is true but only in part. There is a certain aspect of it that feels like a French Ghibli film come to life, but also indebted with a sense of neorealism. In that way it tracks the paradox of child’s perspective: what happens when innocence meets grief? Sciamma has shown herself to be masterful when working with children, exploring identities and relationships through the female gaze, and doing it all in a refreshingly succinct way (indeed, in Sciamma’s oeuvre, this feels most similar to Tomboy). She puts all these pieces together once again in Petite Maman, which runs a welcome 72 minutes in this current age of bloated runtimes. With the aid of the two starring actors and real life sisters Joséphine Sanz and Gabrielle Sanz, she navigates her way around the story with both the natural curiosity and the fickle attention span of a child.
Like Portrait, the sound is almost wholly diagetic until the end, which lends a sense of dreamlike surrealism, as well as a constant sense of mystery and fragility. There are precocious kids being adults, while being as innocent as doves, accepting the truth that they see in front of them. It is an extraordinary look at grief and family history, but Sciamma never deigns to overexplain, nor does she push you to any interpretations or try to hit you over the head with any messages. It’s a gentle kind of film, in the best way possible.
The ideal approach to watch this film is to go in knowing as little as possible (though the title is a hint to the astute French speaker), which means that fittingly enough, this review will have to settle for brevity. There will be a moment when everything clicks in your head and you realize what is going on. That alone is satisfying enough, but the movie is pleasurable throughout, filled with delicate moments that clutch on to your heart. By the end, you won’t want to say au revoir.
