In 2021, at the Berlin Festival, Céline Sciamma (Portrait of the girl in fire) presented a film of rare poetry, Little mom, unfortunately removed from the prize list under a concert of protests. This work of delight, mystery and fantasy in a wood enchanted by all possibilities is finally revealed on our screens.
Far from the period costumes and the windy shores of her acclaimed and award-winning previous film, here is this great French filmmaker on the edge of the forests, opening the door to metamorphoses and the fog of family ties while leaving the viewer free to project his own shadow theatre.
From Paris, the filmmaker explained that she wanted to explore the theme of sisterhood and solidarity by applying it to childhood. “The concept of the film is based on the meeting of a little girl with her mother at the same age as her. I asked myself: “If I had known my mother as a child, would she have been my sister and my friend?” So, I observe them by upsetting the genealogies. »
In this film, little Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) has just lost her beloved grandmother at the age of eight. And while his parents empty the house of his memories, the child explores the surroundings, where his mother once played. But when the latter disappears for a few days, she makes a friend, Marion (Gabrielle Sanz), who helps her build a cabin and invites her to her home. Their role-playing in the kitchen adds to the shifting of landmarks.
While the interior scenes were filmed in the studio, the outside air comes from the town of Cergy, where the filmmaker spent her childhood. Céline Sciamma, however, refuses to identify with her characters and claims fiction. This mirror work is located outside of time, going back and forth from yesterday to today, avoiding marked period effects to facilitate everyone’s projections.
My grandmother died at 103. We can repoliticize our history through play by drawing on magical realism. Thus, the place of the fairy tale with its forest is a very democratic space, that everyone knows it.
“My grandmother died at 103,” she said. We can repoliticize our history through play by drawing on magical realism. Thus, the place of the fairy tale with its forest is a very democratic space, that everyone knows it. There is fairy tale where we touch universal themes. The ancestral narrative choices are based on total simplicity with time travel around the grand narratives of rivalry and conflict. But the trip that I propose is intimate and offers a timeshare. Its mythology is based on an act of faith: the “I believe you” which resounds from one to the other by inviting the spectator to new questions. »
lead children
Twin girls embody the little girls, adding to the dreamlike vibe. Céline Sciamma is used to directing children. His first three feature films, The birth of octopuses, tomboy and girl bandwere learning films, but for the first time she put realism back in favor of the galloping imagination, in an almost psychoanalytical approach.
“I was looking for sisters, and twins were welcome,” she says. My casting director met about twenty children. These two girls have imposed themselves. We read the script to them, talked about the ideas of cinema that underlie it. For the staging, the question of the rhythm and the movement of the bodies was central. I didn’t talk about the emotions to convey, but we built something together and, in some cases, through a rather dark story. I spent three hours a day with them without making them play unpleasant things and without them having to take any risks. When they played, I played. I was talking all the time. They did not feel alone. It was quite playful, without improvisation. Rhythm has never been so precise in my cinema as with Little mom. After eight days, they had integrated the notions of the movement. Children learn quickly. »
Céline Sciamma claims the alchemy of her collaboration with the director of photography Claire Mathon, Caesarized for Portrait of the girl on fire. “She worked on the light in order to accompany this time the absence of time travel and used the size of the shadows to film girls in pajamas eating cereal. »
Little momintended to be seen by an intergenerational audience, is aimed at both children and parents, and the issue of bereavement is tackled head-on, because all ages face its pain.
Little mom hits theaters May 13.