Our ‘Petite Maman’ review was first published as part of our Toronto International Film Festival 2021 coverage.

Where to watch: ‘Petite Maman’ opens this Friday, April 22nd, at the Landmark in West LA and The Grove.

Céline Sciamma returns to the big screen with an intimate portrait of a girl in mourning in Petite Maman. Scaled back in both story and scope in comparison to Sciamma’s last feature, Petite Maman packs a plethora of emotional catharsis and full circle sweetness into its 72-minute runtime.

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A beautiful gliding one-shot establishes the environment our 8-year-old protagonist, Nelly (Joséphine Sanz), finds herself in: a nursing home on a dreary afternoon in the French countryside. She goes room to room, politely saying “Au revoir” to the elderly women that inhabit the home, and we quickly learn that Nelly’s grandmother was a resident there until recently. Packing up the grandmother’s humble belongings is Nelly’s mother (Nina Meurisse), whose vacant eyes express her inability to accept this new reality.

Upon returning to the family home, which Nelly’s mother and father (Stéphane Varupenne) are tasked with clearing out, Nelly is free to roam throughout the untamed wilderness behind the house. Stumbling upon the fort that her mother constructed as a kid, Nelly meets another girl her age, Marion (Gabrielle Sanz). The two girls connect quickly, similar upbringings and temperaments make them fast friends but a few too many coincidences lead Nelly to question who Marion really is and soon learns that Marion’s presence can offer her a sense of closure in her own life.

Is Marion real? A figment of Nelly’s imagination? Or something more? Sciamma plays with these ideas early on but does a fantastic job of staying rooted in reality. Instead of leaning into the abstract sci-fi realm, she expands on the whimsicalness of childhood imagination and optimism (although the comparison to Netflix’s Dark can be made whole-heartedly). Her signature themes of female companionship and emotional intimacy contribute to the film’s most memorable moments, fitting nicely into her canon of highly impactful and poignant work.

Petite Maman is a beautiful story about a child’s navigation through grief, told with a tenderness that quietly radiates with femininity and compassion.

72 min. Distributed by NEON.