“I don’t know the real stuff,” eight-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) tells her father (Stéphane Varupenne) one day at breakfast. Nelly has asked what her father and mother (Nina Meurisse) were like as kids, but she’s only received the basic information, the usual handful of memories that sprout into a person’s mind when thinking about the past. Nelly knows little things, like how her father liked pizza, or how her mother built a fort out of trees in her backyard, but there are so many other things that Nelly doesn’t know, and frankly, her parents have either forgotten over the years, or simply haven’t thought were worthwhile to share with their daughter.
At the beginning of Petite Maman, the stunning new film written and directed by Portrait of a Lady on Fire’s Céline Sciamma, Nelly has lost her grandmother. Later on, Nelly will tell her mother that her “last goodbye wasn’t good” because neither of them knew it would be the last. But it’s not just that Nelly couldn’t give her grandmother an effective goodbye, since we can’t know when a goodbye will be the last one, it’s also all the little things that get lost when we lose someone. There are so many pieces of “the real stuff” that we lose when someone passes, to the point that there is so much about even the closest people in our lives that we can simply never know. Even the littlest things help craft the people that we hold close and love.
In Petite Maman, Sciamma explores this idea in a film that almost feels like a modern-day fairytale, quiet and intricate, but absolutely lovely, through and through. As Nelly and her parents return to her mother’s childhood home to clean it out, Nelly discovers a Marion (Gabrielle Sanz), a girl her age in the woods where her mother used to play. As the two become quick friends, Nelly finds herself bonding with her mother in a way that she never thought possible.
Petite Maman focuses on the discovery that our parents were at one time just like us, with lives and problems that were fully formed before we ever were. But again, Sciamma is also exploring those elements that made our parents and what came before us that we can never quite know. As Marion tells Nelly during a game, “secrets aren’t always things we try to hide, there’s just no one to tell them to.” It’s a heartbreaking idea Sciamma is wrestling with here, but Sciamma does it with grace and heaping amounts of love, showing that we should appreciate the time that we have with the ones we love while we can.
Sciamma is extremely playful in Petite Maman, reveling in the joy of the friendship between Nelly and Marion, as they build forts together and messily make pancakes. As Petite Maman unravels itself, this bond becomes even more powerful and overwhelming in its importance, a friendship that helps Nelly understand her past and what came before her in a way that is truly beautiful.
But Sciamma’s filmmaking is equally playful here. Sciamma and cinematographer Claire Mathon find warmth in this home in the woods that feels lived in and full of a history that, again, we can’t quite fully know. Sciamma is brimming with tenderness and fondness for these characters, especially in the charming moments between Nelly and her father. Watching Nelly help her father shave his beard is like we’re watching a core memory from Nelly’s childhood being formed. Sciamma also feels like an active participant in this relationship when at bedtime, Nelly says she wants to “transport to tomorrow,” and when her father turns off the bedroom lights, Sciamma immediately cuts to Nelly’s next play date with Marion.
With Petite Maman, Céline Sciamma crafts a staggeringly gorgeous fairy tale about the little things we don’t get to learn about the ones we love, the struggles of loss, and the loveliness of those that came from the path behind us.
Rating: A-
Petite Maman is currently playing in limited release, and will expand to more theaters on May 6.