In Little mom, the magnificent new film by Céline Sciamma, we follow the enchanted wanderings of eight-year-old Nelly, following the death of her beloved maternal grandmother. While her parents are busy emptying the house of the deceased, Nelly learns one morning from her father that her mother has decided to leave for a few days. To overcome her boredom, the child sets out to explore the surrounding forest, where she soon meets a girl of her age who is none other than her mother, hence the title.
At the end of the opening sequence of the film, we see Nelly join her mother, Marion, in the room of the center for the elderly which her grandmother occupied. Marion has her back to her daughter, who questions her then is silent. Alone in the shot, the mother goes to sit at the window without saying a word, always with her back to her: in her mute contemplation of the outside, with all these vertical lines that divide the frame, Marion seems to be contemplating the outside from a prison. A subtle tracking shot completes the reinforcement of this impression of distance felt by Nelly, whose vision of the world the film espouses.
Although seemingly banal, this passage nevertheless conceals the key to everything that will follow: it is the trigger that pushes Nelly to probe her imagination in the hope of finding answers to questions of reality.
When the film shifts to the property of her late grandmother, the open, offered nature provides an escape for Nelly. In the woodland surroundings where her mother also once escaped, Nelly befriends this childish version of Marion. Through it, Nelly will be able to question the past, going so far as to visit her grandmother’s house as it once was.
Gradual bewitchment
The sequel, which sees the border between eras become increasingly porous, reaffirms the attraction of the director of birth of octopuses and Portrait of the girl on fire for the theme of sorority, as well as her extraordinary gifts for probing the female psyche beyond clichés. With Céline Sciamma, the delicacy of the approach is matched only by the sharpness of the gaze.
From the outset, the pretext of the film (a child tries to find her mother who has isolated herself in her pain) seems quite simple. But that’s without counting the consummate art of the filmmaker, whose writing, both screenplay and cinematographic, has the good fortune to captivate so gradually that we only become aware of it once bewitched.
As in his excellent tomboy, Céline Sciamma attaches her camera to her very young protagonist, filming “at the height of a child”. Treated with a judicious absence of flafla, the elements of magical realism take on a familiar, factual dimension. No flashes of phantasmagoria, no special effects: the time, even the “space-time” of the game, all of this is true for Nelly.
However, under deceptively bare exteriors, the staging reflects a quiet, sober mastery, because there is nothing left to prove.
Meet life
The filmmaker has also been able to cultivate in her novice stars, Joséphine Sanz (Nelly) and Gabrielle Sanz (Marion), a pair of credible and natural interpretations. Moreover, having this improbable mother-daughter tandem act out gives the film a strangeness that is not disturbing, but reassuring.
In the role of Nelly’s parents, Stéphane Varupenne and, above all, Nina Meurisse are also very accurate. Enhanced by a discreetly poetic cinematography by the assiduous collaborator Claire Mathon, all of autumnal light sometimes pale, sometimes warm, the film also benefits from a very evocative music by Para One (Jean-Baptiste de Laubier).
Never intrusive or emphatic, the latter accompanies, here and there, a heroine whose childish games hide an eminently serious intention, namely to try to understand her mother in order to better reconnect with her. That is to say that the substance, like the form, turns out to be much more complex than it seems at first glance.
Indeed, despite appearances, in this season of the dead, it is to meet life that Nelly goes. And so it is that, without noise or affection, Little mom stands out as another essential work by a filmmaker who is just as essential.