French screenwriter/director Céline Sciamma is no stranger to New Zealand screens. She made the touching Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but before that she made the even better Tomboy and Girlhood. She also wrote an extraordinary animated feature called My Life as a Courgette.
Her latest release is called Petite Maman.
One thing just about all Sciamma’s films have in common is that they’re often about young women, in many cases very young.
Photo: Screenshot
We meet 8-year-old Nelly as she farewells her friends at a retirement home. Her grandmother has just died there.
Nelly is taken by her parents to Grandma’s house. Grandma was the mother of Nelly’s mother Marion. They have to clear away a houseful of memories.
Nelly and her mother talk about growing up in this house, and how Marion built a hut in the woods when she was Nelly’s age.
Nelly is aware that her parents are having problems. In fact, Mum takes off the next morning without even waking Nelly up.
To distract her, Dad gives Nelly things to do, inside and outside the house. Then Nelly goes for a walk.
Along the way she meets another little girl, around the same age as her. The two girls are quick to make friends, and Nelly’s neighbour asks for a hand. She’s building a hut in the woods.
It takes a while to sink in, but we notice something the girls take a while to spot. They’re not “around the same age”. They’re exactly the same age. And that’s not all. It’s like looking in a mirror.
Neither girl initially makes any more of it than the fact they get along very easily. Like so many of Celine Sciamma’s films, it’s all about girls and their best friends.
It’s only when Nelly’s new friend tells her she’s called Marion – like Nelly’s mother – that the penny drops. The two identical houses, the hut in the woods, the instant rapport…
She tells Marion her suspicions, and Marion has no trouble accepting it. “You’re from the future?” she asks.
But where most time-travel stories get bogged down with Hot Tub Time Machine mechanical details, that’s not what Petite Maman is out to do.
This isn’t about going back into time to change the present, or the future. This is asking a far more basic question.
You look at these two delightful 8 year old girls – played beautifully by twins Josephine and Gabrielle Sanz – and their joy at being together, at devising intricate games and stories.
And you ask: where does adult sadness come from? Why is the older version of these girls struggling so much with her life?
The film is taken entirely from the girls’ point of view, and while it’s not particularly for children, it’s open-hearted enough for anyone to enjoy. At just one hour ten minutes, it’s a perfect length too.
Petite Maman is a joy to watch, set in a rather more convincing 8-year-old world than the Disney Channel version we’re so used to.
Céline Sciamma has an enviable passport into that world that so many of us lose all too quickly. This is a film that will linger in the memory, long after the flashy and sensational have gone.
