If you’re looking for a sign of the corona’s decline, you can find it in local cinemas. Slowly, all the films that have been waiting on the shelf since the outbreak of the plague are coming to our screens. For example, “There is no evil in the world”, the excellent Iranian film that won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival just before the world went crazy, was finally distributed here last month. “Unlucky Sex or Crazy Porn,” the brilliant Romanian gem that picked up the award last year, joined him a little later.
Now it’s the turn of another gemstone: “Little Mother”, by French director Celine Siama, which was also screened in the 2021 edition of the festival. After raising dust in a drawer for about a dozen months because of the different variants, the film is now seeing light. It was worth the wait.
The corona may have slowed the pace of the world, but the pace of Siamese has always been measured and calculated. She broke out in 2007 with her first feature film, “Water Lilies”, and has since directed only three more films – “Tom Boy”, “A Bunch of Girls” and “Portrait of a Girl on Fire”. Only three, but each of them was for me a modern, brilliant and groundbreaking classic in its own way, and all together made her one of the most important directors of our generation.
Now “Little Mom” is also joining this list. As its name implies, this is the minor film in Siamese’s career, but it does not detract from its power, uniqueness and beauty.
This is a compact and compact chamber drama, lasting only 70 minutes – if you watch it twice in a row, it will still be a shorter experience than watching the new “Batman” once, which is also coming to us this weekend. Long live the little difference.
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“Little Mother” is also one of the first notable films shot in the midst of the Corona period. It has almost no characters, and its scenes of occurrence are limited, so that was not a problem.
The protagonist of the film is a little girl, who miraculously inexplicably gets to meet her estranged mother in another version – as a child her age, full of joy of life, and they both get to spend time together for a short time, and forge magical friendships between them.
Thus, the daughter discovers what kind of girl her mother was before life came, and perhaps even realizes for the first time that her grief, which has always stood between the two, is not her fault, but for entirely different reasons.
Siama is a creator who always turns in different and surprising directions. The plot of “Water Lilies”, for example, takes place in the niche world of formal swimming, which has proven to be a clever metaphor for the social dynamics of adolescence. The plot of “A Bunch of Girls” takes place in the gray housing estates of Greater Paris, and rewrites the rules of the French suburban film. “A Portrait of a Girl on Fire,” for his part, rewrites the rules of period drama, and of films about artists and their muses. “Little Mom,” on the other hand, clearly corresponds with “My Neighbor Totoro,” Hayao Miyazaki’s animated hit.
Inspired by Japanese classics, Siama places the plot in an arena of enchanted nature – the mysterious forests that surround the mother’s childhood home. As in “My Neighbor Totoro,” here too this location turns the film into a fairy tale: a tale that illustrates that play, imagination and ingenuity are a necessary part of the childhood experience and adolescence process, and that allows us to deal with sadness, pain and loss.
As in “Portrait of a Girl on Fire”, here too Siamese works with a moderate Claire, one of the best photographers of our time, who was recently signed to “Spencer” as well. Her poetic photography is always a feast for the eyes, and in this case also contributes to the fantastic dimension of the film.
This dimension is also intensified thanks to another regular partner of Siama, the composer known as Para Wen. As in previous times he has collaborated with her, his music has heavenly, even mystical touches. Either way, she’s mesmerizing, and you can listen to her bluffs regardless of the movie.
In the game segment, Siama has always loved working with beginner talents, and this time it’s especially young discoveries. The lead roles star twins Josephine and Gabriel Sanz, elementary school students who play the mother and daughter here, and do so in a way that befits any superlative.
In addition to all the skills we have already mentioned, as a screenwriter-director, Siama also has a passionate pen. Her scripts are always full of love, and are interwoven with sensitive and moving quotes. “Little Mom” may look like a little movie, but it has a lot of great sentences. For example, “Secrets are not necessarily things we hide. They are sometimes things we have no one to tell.”
This sentence is a good summary of the career of Siama, a filmmaker who believes in the existence of twin souls, and in the importance of observing and listening. As in “Portrait of a Girl on Fire,” here too her characters find a sympathetic ear to words they have never had a reason to say. Thanks to the charm of cinema and the director’s belief in the power of sharing, they tell these things to us too.
Avner Shavit is the film critic of Walla!