"I'm glad we met."
Vancouver International Film Festival
Starring eight-year-old twin sisters, Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz (both equally adorable) as Nelly and Marion, who become fast friends when it's discovered Nelly has somehow met her own mother at her current age when she plays in the woods behind her beloved grandmother's country house after her death. Despite the premise suggesting hints of supernatural or light sci-fi touches of time travelling and meeting younger versions of present-day characters (think Back to the Future with kids), it's a refreshingly simple and basic story of children learning to understand adult feelings.
Nina Meurisse and Stéphane Varupenne co-star as Nelly's adult mother and father in the present. They offer subtle performances of gentle parenting. Scenes where they casually interact with their daughter feel so genuinely naturalistic in the momentary ordinariness. How Sciamma through Sanz shows a child's first experience of death is pitch-perfect in its mixture of confused curiosity and weary acceptance.
It's such a sweet yet surreal rumination on grief while expressing a young age when you start to become aware of your parents as independent people with their own lives, feelings, and past. Petite Maman is such a winning film capturing authentic moments of everyday wonder through its depiction of childhood, emotions, and complex feelings.
Petite Maman screened as the closing film of the 2021 Vancouver International Film Festival as part of the Contemporary World Cinema series.
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