Petite Maman premieres at Berlinale 2021: All about mothers, daughters and relationships

French filmmaker Celine Sciamma’s new film, Petite Maman, that premiered at Berlinale 2021, is a delicate dialogue across generations

(Images courtesy Berlinale)
(Images courtesy Berlinale)
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Namrata Joshi

Childhood can be a most wondrous state of being. A time when you can live unabashedly in the moment yet have the necessary sweeping imagination to take flight into the future and a dogged curiosity to be able to dig deep into the past.

Adulthood, on the other hand, while resting indifferently on the present, often ends up regarding future with both trepidation and hope and holds on to the past with a pool of memories, both happy and sad, that can nourish, mould and, at times, also destroy.

French filmmaker Celine Sciamma’s new film, Petite Maman, that premiered at Berlinale, is delicately poised in the liminal space between yesterday, today and tomorrow where relationships are gradually lost, quietly searched for and gracefully reclaimed. A portrait of fragile human bonds in the tight clasp of time.

Sciamma, who had set the Cannes Film Festival abuzz in 2019 with her passionate and poignant Portrait of a Lady on Fire, again casts her feminine gaze at the world of women. Along with her cinematographer Claire Mathon, she visualises an empathetic narrative about mothers and daughters that is hushed but resounding, measured yet abundant. A deceptively simple, wisp of a film with rare profundity tucked away in its folds, a very brief but impeccably crafted choreography of images and emotions that manages to encompass an entire lifetime of experiences for its viewers.

The beginning, ironically, is in “au revoir”. Nelly’s parents are clearing up the country home of her grandmother after her death. She is unhappy that her last goodbye to her wasn’t good enough; she didn’t know back then that the lady would soon be gone forever. Then one fine day Nelly’s mother, Marion, also suddenly disappears without saying goodbye; without offering an explanation, while Nelly chances upon a new friend in the woods and new questions, puzzles and enigmas begin to emerge.

Some universal fears lurking deep within us get dredged out by proxy—of not being able to see the loved ones again, of not having another time together. Petite Maman is about crushed individuals like us and the many smashed souls. It’s about the broken chords of relationships, and the hollows left in the heart. Yet it offers the promise of hope and healing. That the vacuum and voids can be filled again by travelling in time and journeying within. That intimacy will always be the bedrock of a mother-daughter relationship, only the mom has to espy and meet up with the little girl in herself and the daughter has to discover the matriarch within.

In that sense, Sciamma creates a compassionate conversation across generations. The little girl slips into her dead grandmother’s bed one night as though ensuring continuities. She is bent on keeping the walking stick of her grandmother. She can smell her hand on its grip. The grandmother, in turn, had hoarded all the childhood things of her daughter. Perhaps to bequeath to her granddaughter one day. Petite Maman captures life in this gentle yet assured flow, the magic that lies in the heart of most elemental.

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    Published: 06 Mar 2021, 12:00 PM