Petite maman

A hot take: this really needed more Totoro or Cat-Bus. Wouldn't it have been something to see Marion and/or Nelly chilling out on the belly of a cute little troll with black wood sprites flying about?

My comparison to Miyazaki isn't some big leap or accident as Celine Sciamma has been up front about the inspirations for her film. What I took from this was maybe something that is perhaps an extrapolation of how it was made which is, since it has to be in 2020 into early 2021, a Covid-era pandemic movie. That it begins with a little girl saying Au revoir to several seniors at an old age home from which her grandma just died (don't forget as the cliche and song go the Children are the Future) can't be completely accidental or coincidental, and if she wrote it in some sense as a way of coping or reckoning with this period in time I get it. That it's also about the girl/Nelly's mother going away to some operation tracks back to Totoro and that idea of expressing a childhood point of view but with a dollop of surrealism/magic realism (spoiler, the other little girl, who is played by the performer's twin, is supposed to be not simply a little friend but the title character).

I find coming to this after it seems practically everyone else I follow critically has watched it and heaped buckets of praise on it that I'm somewhat outside the pack simply calling it *good* and not some total masterwork (my better half couldn't stand it but that's another story). I come to this also as a big fan of 'Portrait' and had high hopes for whatever she had to offer. I like Sciamma as a director, I like how she has a gentle and delicate sensibility with her performers and has these patient frames. From my limited perspective on her style (only seen these two for now) you're either completely immersed in her existential cinematic grammar or you're not. I was here up to a point, but wanted something.... more. Or perhaps even less.

At 70 minutes this is a thin slice of storytelling, but that's hardly a negative. Authors for centuries have created novellas and short novels that contain multitudes on the human condition. Maybe some of my lack of connection here is not for disliking what she does so much as what is not here or left out. This is a story that has grief as a theme, but aside from a couple of instances where the little girls have fun making pancakes or spitting out a little bit of bad soup, they're restrained... maybe so restrained that it feels uneasy at times. Maybe that's part of the point, but I had to wonder if it was because these are girls who haven't acted much before that Sciamma had them do less because she knew they couldn't or simply by design of the script.

Either way there is that and also the distinct lack of music. That of course, as in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, leads to an astonishing point where music does come in near the end. But aside from that and maybe one other small moment there isn't any score here, and it's so quiet that it's maybe too quiet for a story about girls (yes even as one is the Maman) who form a connection. Or to put it another way, it's a story with a kind of slightly heightened magical sense, maybe akin to something out of Rivette, and it's played so straight that ALL the work is on us as the audience to interpret. Again, I don't mind that work, but even at 70 minutes it asks a lot emotionally.

I don't mean to give the impression I wasnt captivated by this or admire it as I certainly do, but perhaps it edges to being slightly overrated as well. As either a short film at 30 minutes or a longer feature it could either condense its ideas into something still as profound but more to the point (still keeping her patience and time in scenes), or as a longer feature with more time with Nelly and/or Marion and the parents. It's a gentle little movie that is pretty and in its own muted dimensions charming, but I don't see it staying with me as long as her other film and didn't hit the kind of chord maybe I'm just looking for more after these last two years (ironically Portrait was one of the last films I saw in a theater before lockdown).