Sometimes one actor or actress can carry a whole movie. That's no news. What is news is that a 4 year old girl succeeds in this. That's what Victoire Thivisol is doing. The movie follows her character, Ponette, through the hard times she has after her mother's death. Ponette spends most of the film trying to get her mother back, or at least getting contact with her. The strong point of the movie is that it succeeds in bringing the viewer into the world of thoughts and feelings of Ponette, bridging the large emotional differences between child and adult. I can remember that when her father picked her up from a solitary hiding place, saying 'Your mother is not coming back', thinking to myself 'That may be true, but can't you see how you're hurting the child?'.
Jacques Doillon is said to have spent months just going through the movie with the children, and changing the script, based on what they did out of themselves and the reactions they gave. And the result shows it - the movie really enters the children's world. Still, even his great directing wouldn 't have gotten this far without a child that so sublimely could feel in and show so many different emotions as Thivisol. It's not without reason that she was chosen 'best actress' on the Venice film festival.
The only disappointment in the movie is the end. On itself this is well directed and played, but the shift from realism to symbolism breaks the film's strength, which lies not only in its portrayal of the child's world, but also in its embedding in the so-called 'real world'. Getting a good end to this movie is indeed hard, but the actual ending still does not feel well.
Jacques Doillon is said to have spent months just going through the movie with the children, and changing the script, based on what they did out of themselves and the reactions they gave. And the result shows it - the movie really enters the children's world. Still, even his great directing wouldn 't have gotten this far without a child that so sublimely could feel in and show so many different emotions as Thivisol. It's not without reason that she was chosen 'best actress' on the Venice film festival.
The only disappointment in the movie is the end. On itself this is well directed and played, but the shift from realism to symbolism breaks the film's strength, which lies not only in its portrayal of the child's world, but also in its embedding in the so-called 'real world'. Getting a good end to this movie is indeed hard, but the actual ending still does not feel well.