Patrick McElroy marvels at Celine Sciamma's age of wonder in her latest PETITE MAMAN (2021, wri & dir by Celine Sciamma, France)

In our daily lives we’re often bogged down by things that don’t matter such as cynicism, worry, consumerism, gossip, and fear. In Celine Sciamma’s latest film Petite Maman she reminds us of the childlike innocence we inherit in our early years before we’re ruined by such meaningless things.

The film focuses on Nelly, an 8-year-old girl who’s just lost her grandmother, and her mother as they visit her own childhood home to clear things out. While the mother is too overwhelmed by the childhood memories in the house she leaves for a few days, leaving Nelly with her father. The following day Nelly wonders out into the forest, where she stumbles upon a fort like what her mother talked about making as a child.

While at the fort she meets Marion, a girl who’s identical to her, and offers to take Nelly to her house, where in a fantasy twist she’s traveled back in time, and Marion is actually her mother when she was 8. They develop a friendship that’s playful and innocent, and the rest of the movie unfolds in a simple fashion.

Sciamma has directed four other movies, only Portrait of a Lady on Fire doesn’t deal with adolescence, but they all share a female perspective that takes place over the course of a few days, or even weeks. Here other coming of age films are about teenage years, Petite Maman is the first one to investigate the prepubescent years, where the world is still a wonder. We often share resentments with our parent’, but this film shows us that they were just like us at one point, and maybe we would have been friends with them at our age.

The performances by the twin sisters Josephine and Gabrielle Sanz who play Nelly and Marion give performances in a pedestrian style, where it’s as if we’re intruding on two children behaving. Sciamma directs this movie with a lack of formalism, mostly consisting of wide shots, and similar to what Spielberg did with E.T., she keeps the camera at the kid’s level. With the small body of work Sciamma has so far, she offers us a female perspective that’s often been neglected by the world of film, and it will be exciting to see what age groups she’ll explore in her future films.

Patrick McElroy is a movie writer and movie lover based in Los Angeles. Check out his other writing at: https://www.facebook.com/patrick.mcelroy.3726 or his IG: @mcelroy.patrick