Petite Maman

There is magic in French writer/director Céline Sciamma’s beautiful new film Petite Maman. Running just 72 minutes, this spare and gentle little film has an emotional core that feels true and authentic.

Petite Maman generates continual surprise and delight, paradoxically, by treating even the strangest circumstances with a wry matter-of-factness.

Quiet and reverent, as if filmed entirely in hushed tones, Sciamma’s film is supremely confident in its every element.

The result is at once both the most ordinary and most enchanted thing that Sciamma has made so far, a wise and delicate wisp of a movie.

In their children, parents often see reflections of the kids they once were. But daughters can’t access those same memories without a little magic. And that’s just what Petite Maman delivers: the spell that makes such a reunion possible, if only in our imaginations.

With a gentle touch, Sciamma crafts a profound, easily digestible film that takes heavy themes and makes them bite-sized. She looks at the way we speak to one another, and to ourselves, at every age, and how these conversations are inevitably dulled in the schism between a child and their parent.

Petite Maman feels more like an extended short story. That’s only in part owing to its having a runtime of just 72 minutes. It also has a deceptive uneventfulness and a sense of everything being casually . . . just so.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Fantastique! I enjoyed this quite a bit. I felt like there were some pacing issues and my interest began to wane a bit after the last night together, but all-in-all it was a lovely story and it's a testament to the filmmaking that I was able to understand exactly what was going on long before it is said aloud.

After 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire,' Céline Sciamma returns with another intimate portrait of love between women, but this time from a different angle. The story follows Nelly, a small girl that accompanies his young mother to empty her grandma's house, who just died. There, in the woods, she encounters another girl, who may have an unexpected connection with her. 'Petite Maman' may not have the raw force of his previous effort; still, the sensibility in its characters transcends its short duration and the apparent simplicity of the story. And what is really striking about the film is the acting of the two little girls, who, of course, are twin sisters in real life. Sciamma takes advantage of this bond by posing a fantastical but very intriguing concept that I don't want to spoil. All in all, 'Petite Maman' proves that Sciamma is a master when it comes to transmitting pain with nothing but a few words.

Talk about a cure for insomnia! Director Celine Sciamma's latest offering in the female bonding genre is so understated, underdeveloped, underexplained and underwhelming that it amounts to little more than a flat-out bore, even at a scant runtime of 100. In this story of grief and loss, viewers find a sensitive eight-year-old suddenly in the company of a mysterious peer who seems uncannily familiar -- and whose identity is easy to figure out without the needlessly long, stretched out, inconsequential relationship that develops between them. And, once the big reveal is made, the story doesn't get any more interesting from there, with the duo engaging in all manner of everyday pedestrian activities that are played for being more significant and profound than they truly are. How this navel-contemplating exercise in minimalist subtlety managed to amass such critical acclaim is genuinely beyond me. However, if you can somehow manage to stay awake for this sleeper (and not in the good sense of the word), congratulations -- you deserve a medal for successfully sticking out this pretentious, self-important snooze fest.

Very boring. Huge downstep from directors previous movie. The entire thing is silent and bland, without any music between scenes and the child actress deliver their lines so deprived of any expression, it becomes a snore fest. The story never comes to a emotional hook or revelation, it felt like a huge waste of time. Maybe this could work with better casting and production, as there is an interesting idea in meeting your petite maman, but as it is the movie is hard to recommend.