Petite Maman

Nelly is an eight-year-old girl who has just lost her beloved grandmother, and is now helping her parents clean out her mother's childhood home. One morning, after her mother has abruptly left, Nelly meets a young girl her own age as she's building a fort in the woods...

Petite Maman hinges on the malleable realities of children, on the intense timelessness of childhood, how idle days of imaginative exploration, of sudden inspiration to build, to race, to run, to climb… could last forever. It’s about the magic of it all, of inhabiting worlds that adults have forgotten existed, where the wonders that regularly occur there are just accepted as a part of life. It’s about how all these things exist for you as a child, until one day, they do not.

At just an hour and ten minutes, Petite Maman (“little mom” in French) is a briskly paced, sweetly emotional film about mothers and daughters, the way children must navigate the emotional tides of the adult world, and the intensity and beauty of brief childhood friends of happenstance. Its simply shot scenes and low key tone belies an extraordinary emotional depth that explores a myriad of heavy topics, things like the death of a parent, the loss of innocence, the debilitating nature of grief, and the guilty feelings of unfinished business that come with losing a loved one, all while inhabiting moments of magic and wonder, and bittersweat rememberance.

Petite Maman is a litmus test of sorts. Magic happens here, and those who are still children at heart will embrace it, accept it, while the adults looking for explanations for what happened will find themselves disappointed.

This is a beautiful little film that will stick with you, one that gets a big thumbs up from me. After this, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, it’s clear Celine Sciamma is a ferociously talented filmmaker, who is more than deserving of your attention on their future projects.