Petite Maman

★★★★

In so many movies about girlhood, “sweetness becomes saccharine and nostalgia a crutch,” said Lindsey Bahr in the Associated Press. But not in Céline Sciamma’s new film, “easily one of the best ever made about mothers and daughters” and another indication that the director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, another French-language drama, is a special talent. Joséphine Sanz plays Nelly, an 8-year-old who, while visiting her mother’s childhood home after her grandmother’s death, wanders into the woods and befriends a girl who looks almost exactly like her and whom we understand to be her mother at the same age. Don’t expect to be assured that little Marion is purely an imaginary friend, said Justin Chang in the Los Angeles Times. “Sciamma has little interest in explanations, and she slyly passes along that disinterest into her characters.” Young Marion is played by Sanz’s identical twin, Gabrielle, and as we discover that Marion, too, has a home and family, the film “generates continual surprise and delight by treating even the strangest circumstances with a wry matter-of-factness.” Similarly, the girls’ simple, no-frills performances communicate “a genuine sense of childhood wonder, melancholy, and joy,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. As the bond grows between Nelly and Marion during pancake breakfasts and late-night talks, you realize you’re watching “a minor mood-piece masterpiece” and “one of the oddest, yet most moving bridging of generation gaps ever committed to film.” (In theaters only) PG