Review: Petite Maman

Image courtesy of Neon.

 Celine Sciamma's "Petite Maman" is a deceptively simple film - it runs a mere 72 minutes and there's not a whole lot in the way of narrative - but it's far from what one might call slight. In fact, the film packs a fair amount of weighty material and an emotional punch into its brief story of a young girl surrounded by grief.

The film opens with a sweet and charming sequence during which young Nelly (Josephine Sanz) feeds her mother, Marion (Nina Meurisse), some snacks as she drives, holds up a juice box for her to sip and then wraps her arms around her neck in a moment of affection. It's hard not to smile along with Marion.

But there's not a whole lot of smiling during the course of the picture, which finds Marion and her daughter joining Marion's husband at the home of her mother - and Nelly's grandmother - who has recently died. The cleaning out of the house becomes too much to bear for Marion and she flees, leaving Nelly alone with her father.

There are a number of poignantly thoughtful lines in the picture and one comes early on when Nelly regrets that she didn't get to give her grandmother a proper goodbye. Marion tries to comfort her, saying that she probably did and didn't realize it, but Nelly notes that the "last goodbye wasn't good."

During her brief stay at her grandmother's lonely, soon-to-be-deserted home, Nelly wanders into the woods and meets a young girl who is building a tree fortress. As it turns out, the young girl is named Marion (Gabrielle Sanz), and Nelly soon finds out that this is no coincidence as she follows the girl home and realizes that the house is her grandmother's home -  but from years earlier. Marion is her mother as a girl and the older woman occupying the house is Nelly's grandmother.

This may sound like the plot to some sort of fantastical science fiction story, but it's far from that - "Petite Maman" tells its story in a straightforward manner and doesn't cater to anyone's genre needs. We learn that Marion is soon to have an operation and that it is to spare her from the disease that has plagued her own mother - an ailment that has finally claimed Nelly's grandmother in the present time frame.

There's a lot of charm to be had in the young girls' bonding - from the whimsical (a funny attempt at making pancakes) to the mesmerizing (a boat ride out to an odd structure in the middle of a lake) - and a lot of power to be derived from the concept of a young person meeting their own parent as a child and, in the process, learning more about oneself and one's family in the process.

The film tackles some heavy subject matter - young people coming face to face with death and loneliness. Regarding that latter topic, it's easy to see that the older Marion, despite having a loving family, is lonely in her own existence. There's a thoughtful concept spoken late in the picture by the younger Marion that really stuck with me - sometimes people are filled with secrets not because they are afraid to tell anyone, but because there's no one to tell them to.

"Petite Maman" is a lovely little film from one of France's most interesting modern filmmakers - Celine Sciamma, who is responsible for the underrated drama "Girlhood" and the ravishing "Portrait of a Lady on Fire." Her latest might seem more minor in scope - but "Petite Maman" is a film that sneaks up on you and makes you realize how much it fits in, thematically and emotionally, into its brief running time. It's one of 2022's best offerings so far.