DarkImbecile wrote: Fri Sep 03, 2021 9:32 pm
Celine Sciamma’s
Petit Maman is a quiet, small story that still manages to be surprisingly dense with mystery and observations about mother-daughter relationships. The less said about its conceit the better, but suffice it to say that this follow-up to
Portrait of a Lady on Fire doesn’t try to reach for that film’s resonant heights and instead veers off in an unexpected direction with the quiet assurance and deceptive depth made possible by Sciamma’s confident direction and writing.
For
Petite Maman, Sciamma inverts the intimate quietude lining the lavish powerhouse of
Portrait of a Lady on Fire into a smaller-scale production that is anything but slight. Posturing as a children's film, Sciamma eclipses Pixar's greatest efforts by conveying piercing adult themes of impermanence, loss, discovery, and ubiquitous value from experiences of true interpersonal connection, through unexpectedly designed methods that creep up on you without ever feeling disingenuous. Nobody should enter this film with any knowledge of its narrative, but suffice to say this is a masterpiece of cinema for all adults who cherish unique cinematic exhibitions of youth- the same population that often sensitively shares the merits of a child's eye worldview, seasoned with a mixture of longing and peaceful remembrance via nostalgia in the present. Like
Portrait, I found myself breaking into a soft cry twice, though these instances were less expected and did not seem quite as deliberately-sketched to pull at heartstrings. In some ways, I was reminded of Hopkins' poem
Spring and Fall, only this film is far more cathartic in its optimistic reframe towards the power of social reprieve from life's uncertainty isolating pain.
The final two scenes feature a certain opportunity taken, with Nelly finally able to tell her grandmother goodbye again (though significantly it's just as passive as her 'real' last goodbye at the start of the film, and not the more physical and engaging intervention acted-out with her mom, gesturing a shift in prioritization and movement into acceptance) followed by a subsequent scene where Nelly and her mother finally reconnect, cemented as her clear priority at this point. The contrast is so subtle yet immensely gratifying as a reminder for how magical wish-fulfillment and redirection of our desires onto the tangible in the present can coexist when they're cut from the same cloth.
I think Sciamma just keeps getting better.
Portrait is excellent, but a revisit didn't impress me as much as the first viewing.
Petite Maman, conversely, I expect to only improve with repeat returns. There are so many concentrated, enigmatic layers of emotion gratefully left as such without forced clarification of ambiguous existential primers. I can't wait to watch this again.
