Petite Maman

However you rate it, Céline Sciamma’s latest film is an exceptional study of childhood.

When applied to cinema the dictum “less is more” prompts thoughts of great directors who, living into old age, gave us films in which everything was pared down and a seemingly simple approach brought us ever closer to the core of their art. That same phrase is what comes to mind when watching the highly acclaimed Petite Maman the fifth feature film to have been directed by Céline Sciamma. Being only in her forties, Sciamma is adopting this style relatively early in her career, but it is that which distinguishes this new piece from its predecessors even though once again life seen through female eyes is central to it. The variety in Sciamma’s work heretofore has come from the age of the leading characters: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) dealt with adults, Girlhood (2014) with young women, Water Lilies (2007) with adolescents and Tomboy (2011) with a ten-year-old girl. In Petite Maman the central figure, Nelly played by Joséphine Sanz, is younger still being only eight years old and the other main character in the tale is another young girl, a role taken by Jospéhine’s twin, Gabrielle Sanz.

In one respect Sciamma is literally giving us less for Petite Maman is her shortest film and runs for only 72 minutes. However, there is also decidedly less happening in terms of narrative action even if the film does begin with the death of Nelly’s grandmother. Following that event, Nelly’s mother (Nina Meurisse) and her father (Stéphane Varupenne) travel with their daughter to the country house where the grandmother had been living and where the mother, Marion, had spent her childhood. They are due to be there for a few days to clear up the house although Marion suddenly departs so that it is just father and daughter who are left there. This is the time when Nelly, while roaming around in the woods where her mother had in childhood built her own treehouse, encounters a girl who resembles her and they quickly become friends. She learns that this new companion also bears the name of Marion and her mother (Margot Abascal) uses a stick due to health issues just as Nelly’s late grandmother had done.

In telling this story Sciamma gives pride of place to the two children. She never hurries things along and, although on occasion music can be used very effectively, she is certainly not afraid of silence. What we feel is happening here is that the viewer is being taken right into Nelly’s world. Even more central to the film than Gabrielle Sanz playing Marion is Joséphine Sanz who, whether prompted by Sciamma or expressing it all by instinct, is able to make us sense that what is on the screen is the whole universe as it is inhabited by Nelly. This is a remarkable feat for we feel that we are part of a world of childhood, one in which, despite a particularly strong rapport with her mother, Nelly has a deep need for a friend. When she encounters young Marion in the woods, this soon builds into the kind of bond that represents the finding of a soul-mate. A great film about childhood made back in 1944, one which disguised itself as a horror movie as evidenced by its title, was Val Lewton’s production The Curse of the Cat People. That film showed how a young girl can create an imaginary friend born of her need for companionship. If Nelly is viewed in a comparable light, then Marion could exist only in her imagination but, however one regards this new friend, her presence enables the girls to acknowledge their secret fears to one another. From this we learn that in a day or two Marion is due to have an operation to fend off a potential bone disorder that is hereditary in her family and we discover too that, given the sudden unexplained departure of her mother, Nelly is worried that there is a possibility that she will not return.

All of this emerges direct and unforced even if initially one wonders if the film is not slightly too reticent in giving details about the loss of the grandmother and the purpose of the journey to her former house. The impact made by the Sanz twins is obviously crucial to the film’s success but nobody who appears on screen gives any impression of acting out a role and one is even reminded of the non-professionals who played in the films of Robert Bresson. Indeed, something of his approach is echoed here: Petite Maman sometimes comes across as akin to Bresson but without the religion if such a thing can be imagined. It certainly is the case that Sciamma’s film builds to a time shared by the two girls which Nelly recognises as being the kind of moment in her life that will never come again. This event is portrayed as some kind of epiphany.

Despite all my praise for Petite Maman, I haven’t yet mentioned the excellent colour photography, but even without that the reader is probably convinced by now that the rating shown above is an error for a higher starring. But the fact is that in a highly significant way I find that the film also requires a reversal of the dictum I quoted as applicable here in the sense that it also shows that more is less. The realities of childhood can be portrayed so as to include fantasies experienced by children, but Sciamma’a film goes much further in moving beyond realism: it asks us to accept this work as some kind of fable in which Nelly is actually encountering her own mother as a child (a key scene finds Nelly telling Marion a secret, namely that she is actually her mother - the film’s title doesn’t lie). Petite Maman is not a ghost story as such, nor is it a tale of time travel, but this element is inescapably present in its own way (young Marion’s mother is indeed the grandmother who has just died now seen as she once was and their home duplicates the layout of the house that is being cleared out in the present). This aspect of Petite Maman obviously fascinates some viewers but I find it of very limited value and indeed a distraction from the film’s marvellous evocation of the world of childhood. Its presence cuts across a work which without it would probably have been a masterpiece - but that’s a view which some would undoubtedly challenge. At its best, Petite Maman is so remarkable that all serious filmgoers should see it and then they can decide for themselves. 

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Joséphine Sanz, Gabrielle Sanz, Nina Meurisse, Stéphane Varupenne, Margot Abascal, Florès Cardo, Josée Schulter, Guylène Péan. 

Dir Céline Sciamma, Pro Bénédicte Couvreur, Screenplay Céline Sciamma, Ph Claire Mathon, Art Dir Lionel Brison, Ed Julien Lacheray, Music Para One, Costumes Céline Sciamma. 

Lilies Films/France 3 Cinéma/France Télévisions/Canal+/Ciné+- Mubi.
72 mins. France. 2021. Rel: 19 November 2021. Cert. U .