The fifth film in my analysis of The films of Celine Sciamma is the childhood fable, Petite Maman. Sciamma shows complete command of the medium as she unfolds a fantasy about coping with grief, the human fallibility of our parents, and the importance of cultivating relationships based on equal power and authority. This short paper will look at the creative wake after Sciamma’s previous film: Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and the impact of COVID-19 on the development of this story of familial friendship between mother and daughter; before subsequently breaking down and applying the specific Sociological idea of Socialization, and the rites of passage experienced through one’s family and peer groups; social mechanisms which shape our understanding of the world and help us foster a sense of self-identity that carries us through into adulthood.
PLOT
After the death of her grandmother, 8-year-old Nelly (Josephine
Sanz) accompanies her parents to her mother’s childhood home to remove her grandmother’s
belongings and settle affairs. The morning after their arrival, Nelly’s mother
abruptly vanishes leaving her father in charge. That same day, as she is
walking in the woods, Nelly comes upon a young girl named Marion (Gabrielle
Sanz) who is building a fort between a small grove of trees. Nelly quickly
deduces Marion to be her mother’s 8-year-old self. Over the next three days, both girls have
interactions and adventures in the past and present. Through these adventures
they grow closer, learning about and from one another, until the magic that
brought them together dissipates, returning to their own time; happy, accepting,
and more contemplative.
HISTORICAL
CONTEXT
The two most significant historical events that impacted
the expression, interpretation and craft of Petite Maman were the
COVID-19 pandemic, its lockdown, and the dissipation of the acclaim and success
of Sciamma’s previous venture. The combination of the critical financial and
populist wave for Portrait climaxing at the end of the award season
circuit, and immediately after, the world transitioning into lockdown due to
the COVID-19 global pandemic, for Sciamma, was the creative equivalent of a high-speed
car crash. The film at once speeding down this highway of accolades, which abruptly
ceased when the world shut down. However, with that time, Sciamma crafted what
some have called a necessary pandemic picture.
Production
When Portrait of a Lady on Fire was released in
2019, it sent Sciamma on an unexpected whirlwind media tour that continued to
build with each viewing. Her sapphic period romance struck a chord with critics
and fans alike. The raw emotion and devastation of Portrait[1]
spoke to the audience as it pulverized their collective metaphoric hearts. Soon,
an
entire fan culture
was built up around the film bringing together those with an affinity for the
period drama. People began to share memes, engage in cosplay, and get a variety
of tattoos to commemorate the film. In true death of the author fashion,
Sciamma’s quasi-biographical revisionist story of an artist falling in love
with the subject of her painting became owned by the public. It was a community
that had formed around the enjoyment of the film. Fans would immortalize their
favorite scenes in paint, as they reproduced specific shots from the film. Additionally,
critics heaved high critical praise
on the film. These
lauding accolades launched the film into one of the best of 2019 with Sight and Sound ranking it one of the 30th greatest film of
all time. Never had Sciamma experienced this level of success and acclaim,
discussing it makes her feel outside herself. In an interview with Director Joachim
Trier for the Petite Maman Criterion edition Blu-Ray, Sciamma described
this experience as “the best most intense years of her life” even if she was
overwhelmed by the response (Criterion Collection 2023). While the festival
circuit and press junkets certainly feel like their own siloed cyclone of self-indulgent
propaganda for a director; they do taper off and eventually expel their energy
upon the shore. Yet, after March 2020, around when all of the production
advertising for the film was ending, the world shut down. There was no other
wave to ride. However, it turned out to be the perfect recipe for Sciamma’s
next venture.
A
COVID Era Film[2]
The period of the COVID-19 lockdown
was devastating. Uncertainty and mass death loomed as collective interaction
became literally toxic. With almost 1.2 million people dead in the US by March
2022, those of us who survived (either the virus, lockdown or both) became
accustom to social distancing (6 ft) washing our hands consistently,
repeatedly, for at least 28 seconds (everyone had a different song in their
head), having “driveway” meet ups and greeting each other with our elbows. For
those lucky enough to get through relatively unscathed, it was a very weird
time. The culture shift was immediate and encompassing. The sociological study
and analysis of this period will be forever a rich window into human behavior
under stressful conditions that ran the gamut of: holding an introverted secret
that some people liked the pandemic excuse to not have to go places or see
people, to the right-wing “libertarian” political caricatures who protested
state and federal buildings with guns over having to wear a mask. For films and
the industry, it was equally challenging and overwhelming for all involved.
The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown also
meant that movie theaters were shuttered, barring a short window of
ill-advised reopening, from March 2020 until April 2021. This left a lot of
people in the industry scrambling. Most films had some type of delay (as in the beginning few people
knew how long restrictions and lockdown were going to last). Drive-ins became popular again, and helped indie theaters stay
afloat, Streaming Services were launched with the promise of new release
movies directly to customers homes, and Christopher Nolan thought he could
single handedly save the theatrical experience with Tenet. Like the social programs put in
place during the great depression, no one single fix for the industry worked to
stave off massive financial losses, and inadvertently created a culture of
anti-theater going that theater-owners are still trying to correct today. Yet,
under these conditions, art was still being made, and Petite Maman, from
its inception to its premiere is a paragon of pandemic filmmaking.
Land locked in France in March of
2020, Sciamma went to sleep and dreamt of two young girls building a fort in
the forest; one of those girls was the mother, and the other was her daughter.
When she awoke, she knew that she had the idea for her next feature. As Sciamma
developed the script, the pandemic raged: no vaccines, and not a lot of hope on
the horizon. Some of the real-world loss began to bleed into the script. The
story’s inciting incident of the loss of an elderly loved one who you “didn’t
have a good goodbye” with, became practically prescient given how many loved
ones expressed last words through alienating
cell phone communication
because of the risk of infection. Those same loved ones would eventually be piled
into refrigerated trucks because the death toll was so high
they could not process all of the bodies quick enough. A poor ‘goodbye’ indeed.
Still, in this context, Sciamma wanted to show us a way forward, and this is
often easily done through the eyes of a child.
Principal Photography on Petite
Maman began in November 2020 and shot for 25 days, ending in December 2020 just
around the time that the first COVID-19 vaccines were released, and well before
the federal mandate. At the time, heavy restrictions were placed on film
productions in order to maintain the spread, before the number of inoculated reached
parity. According to the European Film Commissions at the
time, a film
production operating during COVID (but after the lockdown order was lifted)
required:
·
Test
for Actors and Related Professionals-
Everyone needed to test negative before filming.
·
The
Use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)- face mask, respirators and latex gloves for everyone
on the crew
·
Personal
Disinfectant- For
extensive and long takes. Crew members must carry disinfectant wipes or a 30
ml. bottle of personal disinfectant to wipe areas clean during filming set ups.
·
Onsite
Organization- There
needs to be larger spaces made available to maintain safe distances when crews
work and eat; to maintain a 6-foot distance.
·
Temperature management- Everyone on the
crew must have their temperature checked before the start of the shooting day.
·
Catering-
All the food
needed to be packaged for take-away so that they could eat it while engaging in
social distancing.
·
Securing
the Location- When
scouting locations assume the place is infected; and cleaning crews should go
ahead of time and clean everything.
·
Necessary
Documentation- In
contracts there needs to be an expression of the risk of exposure, so that if
anyone contracts COVID-19 they cannot sue the studio.
·
Management
during Filming There
needs to be a coordinating and supervising of anti- contagion measures by a
safety specialist
·
Focus
on Waste Management-All
possibly infected equipment needs to be properly disposed.
These were
the strict conditions under which Petite Maman was filmed. According to
the Criterion (2023) interview, Sciamma mentioned that there was so much
distance and protocol keeping the crew and the actors apart that it felt very
alienating at times, especially considering the French child actor labor laws,
that only let child actors work for three hours a day. These restrictions, both
in European countries and around the world, created a collective experience
that linked all films in production at that time; whether they decided to
continue principal photography, shutter production, or wait it out and come
back when normalcy was thrust upon us.
COVID era filmmaking had some surprising
similarities because of these parallel restrictions. Regardless of plot, genre,
and style that might make them seem more diverse, many films were structured in
a similar way
Films shot entirely during COVID, often:
·
Were
shot in a single location or multiple isolated locations.
·
Involved
few actors
·
Blocked
scenes with three or fewer people interacting at a time
·
Had
a limited crew
·
Included
camera techniques to try to make up for the production difficulties
These
similarities point to the fact that shooting under the Pandemic restrictions lend
to a certain type of genre filmmaking, specifically Dramas, that can be
introspective and thoughtful rather than bombastic because that added risk. The
films that did not fit this criterion that were being shot during COVID were most
likely the films that were already in production prior to lockdown, which
resumed once restrictions were lifted.[3] Some of the films mentioned
the pandemic, while most others ignored it.
For
Petite Maman, since Sciamma conceived it just prior to lockdown, when they
were allowed to begin principal photography, she knew how and where she wanted
to shoot the film. It has two primary locations: The woods and the grandmother’s
house (set dressed to look like the past and the present). The set had few
rooms and there were no more than three actors in a scene together at any one
time; and only 5 total actors in the main cast. The story moves back and forth
from the house, with each room having scenes in both the present and the past.
It is economical, terse and brilliant for the conditions the world was under;
and gives credence to the arts’ ability to thrive even in the worst circumstances.
SOCIAL
ANALYSIS
According to Sciamma, one of the major
influences on the development and style of Petite Maman was Hayao Miyazaki, more specifically My Neighbor Totoro[4]. The Ghibli-esque childhood whimsy
while experiencing hardship is fully embodied by Sciamma’s 2021 film. Its
circumstances and casual acceptance of the extraordinary with little
interrogation mirror Miyazaki’s work in beautiful way. Both films provide some amount of magical realism,
and both films deal expertly with the themes of fear, grief and loss.
Grief and Loss
Sociologically,
grief and loss are rarely touched upon, as these subjects are often monopolized
by Psychology, and its derivative variants. Yet, grief and loss are something we
all collectively deal with, it is a feature of all cultures and life in
general. There are aspects of collective grief that create and bind
communities, cults and collectives together. Empathy allows for a clearer
understanding of others regardless of cultural, generational, economic or other
identity barriers. We all grieve. We all experience loss. And yet, we often, by
choice or by circumstance, endure grief alone.
The
Sociological theoretical perspective that is often used to talk about the more
social psychological aspects of life is symbolic Interactionism (SI) and more
specifically the social construction of reality. Briefly, symbolic
interactionism is a sociological conceptual framework which emphasizes the
creation, meaning and application of various symbols (usually language and
gestures) through social interaction and observation. Constructionism, a
derivative of SI, understands that meaning is conditional to the historical,
cultural and social context that is present. So, through these lenses, by
living in society we understand grief and loss by how we interact and react to
people experiencing it; while recognizing that other cultures, societies and
nations throughout time have a different but equally respectful (usually)
process for dealing with death.
According
to Maciejewski, Falzarano, She, Lichtenthal, and Prigerson (2021) there are
three basic principles of bereavement: Void in the Social State, Void Filling, and
collective acceptance. The “Void in the Social State” refers to the monumental
shift that happens micro socially to individual lives when experiencing loss. There
is a massive context shift for the individual(s) who are left behind. In the
case of spousal loss, the bereaved has to content with being single again,
adopting the roles and responsibilities that were once shared with the deceased
partner. Additionally, they also have to reconfigure their position in the
various external relationships that they are a part of. This restructuring may
increase in difficulty depending on how those relationships were established,
which may also cause disruption (Maciejewski et.al.
2021).
Continuing
the bereavement process requires a “filling of the void” left by the departed.
Typically, this is understood as a mental distraction, and people throw
themselves into work, hobbies or home projects as a form of avoidance from
dealing with grief and processing the loss. However, this urge to avoid and
process, while common, leads to isolation which creates a self-destructive
spiral of internalized blame. While more difficult, it is much healthier to do
the opposite and not only lean on already established relationships but do best
to create new ones which will develop new roles for the bereaved and challenge
them to reconfigure their relationships (Maciejewski et.al. 2021).
Collective
acceptance is achieved through the understanding that while specific grief and
loss is unique to the individuals involved, the general experience of grief is
socially shared. Life exists and therefore also death. It exists every day,
even if we are not its current target, either directly or indirectly we all
will know death. This collective acceptance of death can be comforting. This is
unfortunately hindered by our cultural individualism, which reinforces the
uniqueness of persons rather than all of the overlapping experiences we all
share.
Petite
Maman sees Nelly
and her family go through these bereavement stages. The first shot of the film is
of an empty hospital bed. The camera then follows Nelly as she walks through
all of the rooms of the Nursing home saying “Goodbye” to all the residents
there. It will later be revealed the greater significance of this moment, but
in the film’s opening, it is showing us a visual representation of “the void in
social state” by showing us the wake of what the dead leave behind; and as it
is removed, the emptiness that is left. This continues through the establishment
of the grandmother’s house in the present; it too is emptying throughout the
film’s run time. Nelly and her parents also seek to fill the void by understanding
their roles after their loss. While Nelly’s parents are direct and extremely
candid with her about their lives and what they can remember from their
childhood, it is the establishing of Nelly’s relationship with Marion that allows
Nelly to process not only her own grief but understand her mother’s process through
loss as well. Thus, by the end of the film, both Nelly and the adult Marion understand
each other as they have come out of this process, filling the empty space left
by their loved one.
Socialization-
The Family and Peer Groups
Socialization, the process of social
learning that begins prior to birth and continues throughout a person’s life,
is guided by individuals, groups and institutions that break up this necessary
information into digestible and “age appropriate” pieces. This process is divided
for better comprehension and scaffolding through childhood into adulthood by
using cultural rites of passage that provide a smoother transition into more
responsibility and give greater amounts of freedom. Two of these mechanisms that assist in this
process of socialization are the family and peer groups.
As
a mechanism of socialization, the family provides a filtered glimpse of the
social world. It does not give the children a complete and full picture of reality
out of a sense of protectionism. It is through the family that a child’s world
first gains structure- one that is fluidly designed by the parents’ values, choices
and experiences; to give their children a since of creativity through fostering
their imagination and exposing them to the broader social world to prepare them
for adulthood. One particularly difficult part of this process is the slow
relinquishing of control that results in both parents and children recognizing
each other, both outside of the roles they were originally given, and seeing
each other as a person. By befriending Marion (the younger version of her
mother), Nelly begins to see her mother as a person outside of her familial role.
Marion reveals to her future daughter that she wanted to be an actress but
eventually gave up on that dream. Nelly also comes to realize that the bouts of
depression that overtake her mother were never her fault. Marion assuages her daughter’s
guilt by saying “It is not about you... I can’t stop thinking about you...I
can’t wait to meet you. But sadness is something that is always there.” Setting
aside the magical realism that allowed this friendship to blossom, many
children come to these realizations, that their parents are also flawed
fallible people from either a crystalized moment of disappointment through therapy,
or both. Sciamma just contextualizes through the power of cinema the
realization that all parents are people and not the center of anyone’s
universe.
Peer
groups are another mechanism of socialization that is integral to the social learning
process of socialization. The fundamental importance of friends, colleagues and
others in the same age group in understanding the social world can be explained
through the difference between sympathy and empathy. While often used as
synonyms, these terms have a fundamental difference that highlights the value
of peer groups to the overall process of deciphering the ordered chaos of any
social reality. Often, when sympathy is invoked, there is a lack of similar
context involved. A person who sympathizes has likely been through a similar/same
experience, but not within the current context, with the same pressures and
demands levied on a person. Additionally, when someone is being sympathetic,
there is likely an air of judgement or sense of superiority built from feelings
of pity and privilege. Their emotional or social investment is miniscule, or
contaminated by classist, racist, sexist or ethnocentric pedestaled posturing. Empathy is generated when individuals either experience
the same context as another person or can accurately place themselves in the
emotional and social state of others. Out of all the mechanisms of socialization,
peer groups lend themselves to empathy more easily than other groups. There is power in the solidarity of experiencing
the world in the same place and time as other people. Collective experiences
allow us to form bonds and have a collective conscience for how the world is interpreted
and known.
Nelly and Marion have their first meet cute in the forest and strike up a quick friendship over the building of a fort in the woods. The forming of this peer group, and the comradery that is built from it, allows for an understanding of each other and a grounding in an acceptance of personhood beyond the roles they were assigned in their original familial relationship. Over the three days they are together, they are able to connect in ways that were not possible with Nelly and adult Marion. Both children see the world similarly. Through play, cooking, and conversations they talk through fears, long held desires, and experiences in the future. Because of their similar age, this can be done without criticism, providing a strong support system. Marion is worried about a surgical procedure that she must endure to eliminate the chances of a hereditary disease. Nelly helps her talk through these fears and is supportive of her until she leaves for the hospital. Nelly, getting over the loss of her grandmother and the feelings of alienation from her mother, is assuaged by young Marion that neither are her fault. Knowing Marion as her 8-year-old self contextualizes for Nelly her mother’s experiences. This empathy results in a nontoxic sympathy at the end of the film when mother and daughter are reunited in their own time. Each character is richer with understanding and a sense of gratitude from the other; both for the roles that they inhabit, and their individual personalities that illuminate them.
CONCLUSION
Celine Sciamma’s Petite Maman is a masterpiece.
A condensed whimsical magically realist minimalism in the style of early Hayao
Miyazaki, this film embraces feelings of hope and familial bonds at a time when
the eminent and immediate threat of a global pandemic siloed individuals into
bubbles to stop the spread of a virus. Sciamma is the first director in my director
analysis series where I did not like their earlier work, but they managed to
win me over with the latter half of their filmography. Regardless, their contribution
to cinema, especially the focus of the non-objectifying camera through “the
female gaze” needs to be heralded as the cultural shift needed to encourage
more cis/transgendered females and nonbinary people of every fluid sexual disabled
and neurodivergent identity to become writers and directors to tell their own
stories.
REFERENCES
Paul K. Maciejewski, Francesca B.
Falzarano, Wan Jou She, Wendy G. Lichtenthal, Holly G. Prigerson 2021. “A
Micro-Sociological Theory of Adjustment to Loss” in Science Direct retrieved on: 4/26/2025 retrieved at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X21000889
The Criterion Collection 2023. “ A
Conversation with director Celine Sciamma and filmmaker Joachim Trier” in Petite
Maman Blu-Ray (Spine 1181) Dir Celine Sciamma.
[1]
Seconded only by the work of Wong Kar Wai and Linklighter’s Before Trilogy
[2] It
needs to be mentioned that COVID is still around and continues to be a
persistent threat.
[3]
The one notable exception to this is Dev Patel’s “Monkey Man” a revenge action
film that was able to be filmed because production were incarcerated in a strict 500 person COVID- bubble.
[4]
Which I reviewed in April of 2020
