Sciamma’s latest feature both continues and steps aside from the themes of her earlier films. Tomboy, Waterlilies and Girlhood make up a coming-of-age ‘trilogy’ about gender and sexual disconnection, about conflicts in moving on from childhood, being a teen, and who we might be as adults. Petite Maman takes us right back to childhood, to Nelly, an eight-year-old girl whose grandma has just died. It’s a short film, shot quickly during lockdown by a small production team. Yet its ambition and reach resonate, dealing as it does with what connects us, how our lives pass and turn out as they do, the tenor they have.
Nelly has driven with her mum to her grandma’s house to sort through possessions and clear it. In the woods alongside the house, she meets Marion, who’s her age, and is building a shelter out of branches. Straightaway there’s a rapport and we learn that Marion is Nelly’s own mother, at the age of eight, living in the same house but some 25 years earlier. It somehow works and takes you along, maybe because both Nelly and Marion accept each other.
