Why we picked it – This film’s novel exploration of a young girl coping with the death of her maternal grandmother by bonding with her mother is a new departure from Céline Sciamma’s usual themes of gender fluidity.
Synopsis – Eight year old Nelly is helping her parents to clear out her mother’s childhood home after her grandmother has died. When she goes into the woods, she meets a girl her own age, Marion, who looks exactly the same as her. Nelly realises that Marion is her mother. She finds out that Marion is about to have an operation to prevent her from developing the same illness as her mother and tells her that she is her daughter and comes from the future.
Nelly and Marion celebrate Marion’s ninth birthday during a sleepover. The following morning, as Marion prepares to go to the hospital. Nelly reassures her the operation will be fine. The two hug and Nelly returns home to find her mother who has returned for a final viewing of the house. The two embrace, as they say each other’s names.
The film – The almost mythological, time-travelling idea of relating to a parent by meeting them when they were the same age as you is something only a film could explore. Nelly and Marion are played by identical twins Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz. As Sciamma explains in the interview below, many scenes were improvised by the two sisters playing together. It was made during lockdown on location in Cergy-Pontoise, Val-d’Oise, which is Sciamma’s childhood hometown.
Director and Writer: Céline Sciamma; Cinematography: France 2021, 83 mins U