Child’s play
PETITE MAMAN Small is beautiful in Céline Sciamma’s portrait of two little ladies…
It just popped into my mind – two kids playing with each other, and they were mother and daughter,” says French auteur Céline Sciamma of the genesis of her fifth feature, Petite Maman. She was halfway through the production of 2019’s Portrait Of A Lady On Fire when the lightbulb lit. “It was a mystical image,” she says. “A very troubling image…”
Shot during the pandemic, Petite Maman is a drama of modest scale but huge impact. It begins with eight-yearold Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) travelling with her mother Marion (Nina Meurisse) to the house of her grandmother, who’s just died. Marion can’t cope with packing the house up and exits, leaving Nelly with her father (Stéphane Varupenne). But soon our young heroine’s days are dedicated to building a hut in the woods with a girl she befriends. A girl called Marion (Gabrielle Sanz) who looks just like herself…
“They were the only kids we saw,” says Sciamma of the Sanz twins, who give two of the finest child performances you will ever see. “They answered our ad on social media, looking for sisters.” So presumably they were naturals? “They were really bad at
first! They learned the craft of shooting on the set. I didn’t rehearse because of Covid, and also because I think it’s about trusting them, saying, ‘I don’t need to test you.’ I did talk a lot during the takes to set the pace or give them actions. And to make them laugh.”
Laugh they do, but Petite Maman is a melancholic affair. Sure, you might call it a ghost story or a time-travel movie, but it deals, subtly, with grief and depression. And yet Sciamma is convinced that it’s a film that doesn’t just feature kids, but is for kids.
“I designed it to be intergenerational,” she insists. “I’ve had the experience with [second feature] Tomboy [focused on a gender-fluid child], which is shown in schools in France. I’ve had young cinephiles saying, ‘I saw the film when I was 10 and it changed my perspective on cinema, or on myself, or both.’ So I hope that parents and kids and grandmothers see it.”
Not all kids’ movies need to be brightly lit, flashing entertainments. Just look at the cinema of Studio Ghibli doyen Hayao Miyazaki. “For me, he is the reference,” says Sciamma. “When you think about a young audience, you think about the most radical audience, in a way, because they don’t have all the cultural background and the pressure that we have, to look at things [in a certain way]. So they can embrace a different pace and new ideas. You should always try out new ideas on young audiences. It can help you to be brave enough to be poetic.” JG
ETA | 19 NOVEMBER / PETITE MAMAN OPENS IN CINEMAS NEXT MONTH AND STREAMS ON MUBI FROM 4 FEBRUARY 2022.