Ponette
by Jacques Doillon
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Delphine Schiltz, Léopoldine Serre, Marie Trintignant, Matiaz Bureau Caton, Victoire ThivisolDirector: Jacques Doillon
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 97 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-05-26
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Fox Lorber
Movie Reviews of Ponette
Movie Review: Magical
Summary: 5 Stars
I have agonized and agonized again over how to start a review of the French film "Ponette." Perhaps my difficulty stems from attempting to describe a film that falls outside my usual cinematic experiences. After all, a steady diet of slasher movies, out and out gorefests, and films dealing with the supernatural tend to erect certain barriers that can be daunting to circumnavigate. One should simply not look at "Ponette" in the same way one views "Friday the 13th" or "Dead Alive," and any attempt to do so does a grave disservice to this magnificent experience. And it is an experience, a film unlike any I have ever seen in my long career of cinema watching. I can't even remember now how I came to see this movie, whether I saw a review somewhere and thought it worth watching or whether a friend recommended the movie to me with the hope that I would abandon the world of cheap and cheesy horror flicks. Well, I haven't given up watching bad movies; I don't think anything could make me give up my nasty little hobby, not even a film as sublime as "Ponette." But this movie certainly gave me a different perspective, that's for sure.
When we first meet the adorable four year old Ponette (Victoire Thivisol), we quickly learn she has gone through a rough patch. She's in a car with her father, arm in a sling, heading out to her aunt's house for an indefinite stay. The conversation between Ponette her dad (Xavier Beauvois) is terse and upsetting: the girl's mother (Marie Trintignant) had an automobile accident with her daughter in the car. While Ponette escaped serious injury--aside from the broken arm--the prognosis for mom doesn't look so good. The accident is far more serious than we initially thought, so serious in fact that our young heroine soon learns her mother has died from her injuries. But what does death mean to a four year old girl? How does a child with absolutely no experience of the wider world cope with the loss of a parent? These are the questions director Jacques Doillon tries to answer in this film. Ponette cannot rely on her grief stricken father, whose devastation is so total that he leaves his daughter with relatives and flees. Her aunt and the adults at school cannot do much to help, either. Instead, Ponette must rely on the assistance of her two cousins, Matiaz (Matiaz Bureau Caton) and Delphine (Delphine Schiltz), and several kids at school to help her through her grief.
What is amazing about "Ponette" is the performance of little Victoire Thivisol as the distraught child. This is not a case of an older, cynical child playing a younger youth. Thivisol really is roughly four years old in the movie. A question for the ages is how Jacques Doillon managed to get this sort of performance out of a kid. How do you explain a complex sensation like the loss of a parent to a child who has never experienced such pain? Moreover, how do you do this and then get them to mirror it back for the camera? Beats me, but Thivisol somehow manages to convince the viewer that she's going through one of life's worst experiences. I think you'd have to go back to Tatum O'Neal to find an actress with similar abilities. Most child actors simply can't emote the way Thivisol does in this film. We're too familiar with kids in pictures who laugh, act up, or mug for the camera. There is no mugging here unless you count the shenanigans we see from some of the other kids in the film. The emotions seem real, natural and deeply disturbing as only reality can make them. The only way Thivisol's performance won't affect you is if you absolutely despise children.
After marveling at the profound range shown by Thivisol, I couldn't help but notice how the movie deals with loss and how human beings cope with such an emotion. The movie shows us scene after scene of Ponette seeking some truth that will explain what happened to her beloved mother and how she can bring her back to life. She goes to a young Jewish girl in her class, Ada (Leopoldine Serre), for help because someone told her Jews are closer to God. Aside from teaching Ponette how to talk to God--which involves serious tests on the playground that will likely make you smile--Ada's information doesn't really help. Information gleaned from adults about Christianity and its notions of the afterlife also provides Ponette with little in the way of concrete answers. Our heroine tries everything she knows, what she thinks of on her own and what others tell her, but nothing brings her mother back. Sadly, the movie sort of cops out at the end, but the journey to the conclusion is far more compelling. What the viewer quickly learns is that the questions asked by Ponette are questions adults ask in the same circumstances. We also question God's motivations and wish beyond hope that anything we do will bring our loved one back to life. There is almost no difference between what Ponette does and what adults do in similar situations.
A final element of the film that really moved me concerned the claustrophobic atmosphere of the set pieces. Director Doillon really gives us a sense that we're in a young girl's world through the use of close-ups, lots of interior shots, and the general inaccessibility to adults. Think back to your own childhood, when your world seemed so large but was really constricted to your home and neighborhood. That's the sense we get from "Ponette," that she inhabits a very small world made up of only a few other people and a few surroundings. Anyway, enough of that. You've got to watch "Ponette" if you get the chance. You'll never see anything quite like it, I assure you.
Summary of Ponette
Live-action films about the very young are rare, and even more rare are such films that work as well as Ponette does, without cloying or pandering. The film stars 4-year old actress Victoire Thivisol as Ponette, who's lost her mother in a car accident. The rest of the film has her dealing with this loss, helped by relatives, but mostly by the other children she knows, and the help is sometimes heartening and sometimes hindering. The core events in the film are nearly all enacted by children, peers of Ponette. Sequenced as they are, they form what can only be termed the mythologies of childhood, using the contrast of childhood and death and the children's take on it to drive Ponette's changing attitudes. The result is seen passing across the face of Victoire Thivisol, one of the most luminous faces since Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc. Filmed cannily in close-ups, we're always privy to the artless emotions of the young girl. She's not old enough yet to have learned to dissemble. Her direct, unaffected performance (if that's what it is) draws us close in as few films have been able to do. If you're unaffected by this film, you might want to reconsider what kind of organism you'd like to be other than a human being. Victoire Thivisol was named Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival 1996. --Jim GaySimilar DVD Movies
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