Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 09/22/22

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Thursday, September 22, 2022

Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021)

Cast: Joséphine Sanz, Gabrielle Sanz, Nina Meurisse, Stéphane Varupenne, Margot Abascal. Screenplay: Céline Sciamma. Cinematography: Claire Mathon. Production design: Lionel Brison. Film editing: Julien Lacharay. Music: Jean-Baptiste de Laubier.

After watching so many movies that thud and blunder along for more than two hours to no lasting effect, it’s a blessed relief to watch Céline Sciamma accomplish so much so quietly in just 72 minutes. Petite Maman begins with 8-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) saying goodbye to the residents of the nursing home where her grandmother has just died. She then accompanies her parents (Nina Meurisse, Stéphane Varupenne) to the house where her grandmother lived, but her mother is so overcome by emotion at the prospect of clearing out a place so laden with memories, that she leaves her husband and Nelly to finish the job. While her father does most of the work, Nelly wanders out to play in the autumnal woods near her grandmother’s house. There she meets another 8-year-old called Marion (Gabrielle Sanz), who is building a hut out of fallen branches in the forest. Immediately we are struck by the fact that Nelly’s mother, who is also named Marion, had told Nelly about the hut she had built in the forest. And so begins a bit of magic, in which we realize along with Nelly that she has traveled back in time to meet her own mother as a child. Sciamma does this revelation with such finesse that it took my breath away, crafting a haunting fable about family and memory and regret. It’s only the most recent of her triumphs as a director, following such remarkable films as Water Lilies (2007), Tomboy (2011), Girlhood (2014), and the marvelous Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019).