With Petite Maman, writer-director Celine Sciamma (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) conceives of a brilliant narrative that could have been executed in numerous, show-offy ways. Instead, she decides to play it straight. Not the choice I would have made—the movie begs for flourishes of fantasy—yet one that works wonderfully. Josephine Sanz plays Nelly, an 8-year-old whose grandmother has just died. (In a typically understated touch that is nevertheless heartbreaking, the movie opens with an unbroken take of Nelly saying goodbye to various older women in a nursing home, stopping by one room after another, before coming to a room with an empty bed where her mother is packing up her grandmother’s belongings.) Nelly accompanies her mother (Nina Meurisse) to the grandmother’s house to spend a few days cleaning it out. Playing in the woods nearby, she discovers a fort made of sticks that her mother had built as a child, as well as another young girl (Gabrielle Sanz, Josephine Sanz’s twin sister) who might just be … her mother? Sciamma’s handling of this possibility is so slight that you might not be convinced of it until the movie is over. And really, the practicalities don’t matter. With sweetly matter-of-fact performances from its two young leads and a modest mise en scene that allows something as simple as wallpaper to make the greatest revelations, Petite Maman softly, yet profoundly, considers things such as mortality and maternity—as well as the fact that there’s no use fretting about it being too late to say goodbye to someone you deeply love, because it will always be too late. Be careful with Petite Maman; the movie is small and quiet, but if you let your guard down, it might devastate you.
(12/15/2021)
