One night in my childhood home, I thought I spoke to my grandfather. I was playing with a toy in my mother’s bedroom when I saw him in the window curtains, and stood there crying out to him. My siblings found me talking to air, and my Asian mother, superstitious as they often are, reassured me that grandpa was making sure I knew he was looking after me. My grandfather died well before I was born, but throughout my life I’ve felt his presence everywhere. My mom and her sisters all looked up to him as a hero; they adopted his philosophies and strong morals and raised me with them. Oftentimes, I think back to that moment in my mother’s bedroom — it is a reminder to me that I am one part of a whole lineage of grandfathers and fathers and sons who have also been as young and vulnerable as I once was. I was taken back to that moment once again as I watched Petite Maman for this year’s TIFF.
Following up such a beloved masterpiece as Portrait of a Lady on Fire is no easy task, but Céline Sciamma exceeds expectations as she trades epic, sweeping romance with a film much more deceptively simplistic. Petite Maman follows Nelly (Joséphine Sanz), a young girl who is taken to her mother’s childhood home after her grandmother passes away. While her parents clean the house and collect her grandmother’s belongings, Nelly meets Marion, (Gabrielle Sanz), another young girl whom she shares a striking resemblance with. The two girls bond over the transitional stages of their lives and soon become best friends. As their secret connection to each other reveals itself, their friendship eventually leads to unexpected places.
For a filmmaker with a past body of work centered on feminine pain, Sciamma’s direction here makes a stark shift into a more cathartic tone. Petite Maman has been described by many as a cinematic equal to a warm hug, and though I wholeheartedly agree, I’d also still argue Sciamma’s specific cinematic interests remain intact. The companionship between these two girls is born out of their youthful curiosity but also their developing concepts of grief. Though the film takes place in quaint domestic interiors, there’s a sense of a greater, adventurous land that only Nelly and Marion can fully see. Sciamma’s obsession with the camera’s gaze upon women and their interpersonal relationships manifests itself here in a loving tribute to the way children are able to see the world, on its purest emotional terms. An otherwise drab backyard is full of adventure, and a little wood is a forest portal that transcends space and time.
In Sciamma’s pursuit of capturing childhood, she makes perfect use of two of the most authentic performances by children I’ve seen on film to date. Twin sisters in real life, Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz have a naturalistic chemistry that builds into something much more complex as the film’s true aspirations reveal themselves. Despite Petite Maman’s compact 72 minute runtime, its themes are constantly maturing, and these young actresses excel at growing along with them. What’s conveyed is a sense of duality to Nelly and Marion, as they grapple with their newfound capacity for introspection while also never losing sight of their adolescent joys. Sciamma has a heartwarming admiration for the fact that, even under dire circumstances, kids still succeed in just being kids in their most precious moments.
I tend to think a lot about how it would feel to speak to my grandfather again (if I did at all): would he understand the struggles I face today? If we knew each other at the right age, would we be friends? What parts of myself are him, and what parts are me? Petite Maman eventually unravels itself into a story about these exact questions. Céline Sciamma’s newest film is a cleverly paced, emotionally complex, and achingly personal study of lineage in the wake of grief. For me, it was a staggeringly empathetic thought experiment, and a wonderful way to start TIFF.
