Petite Maman * * * * ½

Petite Maman is from Celine Sciamma who gave us the perfect Portrait of a Lady on Fire in 2019.

For me, Petite Maman did not resonate as greatly as her previous effort, nevertheless it truly is a thing of beauty, where once again not a second of screen time is superfluous, which might be why it's running time is only 70 minutes. 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire. was set on an island.  In Petite Maman, once again the characters are isolated.

You kind of remind me of someone

"Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye"  a little girl Nellie, says to elderly women as she walks from room to room.   After this extraordinary opening we move to a house in the country on the edge of a woodland. 

The house and the woodland then become the only two locations for the rest of this intriguing but gentle drama. We learn that  Nellie's Grandmother has just died.  Now her mother and father have to clean out her house.  

It is the house that Nellie's mother was born and raised in. Nellie's mother tells her things about the house and her childhood there. But Nellie's mother soon becomes emotionally overwhelmed by the job of cleaning out all the things that made up her mothers life and she has to leave.

Each day eight year old Nellie goes off to play in the woodland as her father continues to attend to the  task of cleaning out the house.  

It is in the woodland where Nellie meets another girl her own age.  Her name is Marion which is the same name as Nellie's mother..... and she looks a lot like Nellie, like they are related.... and she is building a play hut just as Nellie's mother said she used to do.  Marion invites Nellie back to her house and Nellie finds it is exactly the same as the house that her parents are clearing out but now it is lived in.  She meets Marion's mother who looks very much like a younger version of Nellies Grandmother.  

Okay, join the dots, I'm not going to spoil it for you, though nearly every review and even the title, more or less announces what is going on.  Once you know you actually enjoy it more, especially as you watch their friendship grow and as they start to share the realisation: There are some extraordinary scenes but paramount would have to be two little girls sailing on a pond toward an unexplained obelisk.  It is hard to say why its so moving, but wait until you see it.  

Celine Sciamma  makes no concessions or explanations in Petite Maman.   Nellie is not imagining things, there are no magic portals, there is no lightning bolt causing a fracture in time. It just is.  For me that's what made it all the more beautiful.