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This is the territory mined by Ponette, a study made remarkable by its intuitive, affecting script and a brace of astonishing performances. At the centre we have Ponette (Victoire Thivisol), a little girl who's just had her mother (Marie Trintignant) snatched from mortal grasp. Ponette's father (Xavier Beauvois) does his best to trace the unembellished facts for her, all the while coping with an unvented volcanic anger. Unfortunately he works away from home, meaning that Ponette must live and mourn with her aunt Claire (Claire Nebout). Distanced from the tragedy, Ponette's cousins Matiaz (Matiaz Bureau Caton) and Delphine (Delphine Schiltz) are unable to comprehend or penetrate her shell of grief.
Related entirely from Ponette's perspective, both physically and mentally, Ponette is dominated by the 4-year old Thivisol. Present in almost every scene, it's her guilt, pain and imagination that form our journey. Yet Thivisol amazes for more than just being the lead actress; her performance is textured, raw and deeply uncomfortable. At times Thivisol melts from self-assurance to vulnerability in an eye-blink, without once passing through sentimentality. When Thivisol moans "I want to talk to my mommy", this simple request is charged with want, need, hope and love. It's a desire that cuts right to the heart of our mother-dependence; the one person to whom we can run to, drawing strength and unconditional love from an embrace. Thivisol's presence is beyond artifice, it simply is.
Yet while Thivisol shines bright, all of the child actors are superb, seemingly unaware of Caroline Champetier's intimate lens. Each is natural, alive, cunning, naive and trusting; qualities that any parent comes to recognise in their own offspring. A great deal of credit must, of course, be awarded to the dedicated Jacques Doillon. Drawing upon his interviews with thousands of nursery-school infants, Doillon pieces together a unique interpretation of the death process. The resulting script has an incredible feel for the child mind, a place of uncompromising reality tempered with absurdist confusion. This young brain has yet to sort through the torrent of answers, assumptions and interpolations pouring in through the senses; the film captures this outlook with atomic precision, never once betraying the presence of Doillon's guiding hand.
Some may scoff at Ponette's engineered ending but I think that, in the context of Ponette's emotional imbalance, it strikes the right chord. The entire story builds to this moment, the ultimate validation of youthful resilience; kids may be changeable and prone to storm-like mood swings, but this awards them the ability to bend rather than break. Ponette must achieve closure, a resolution strong enough to cement doubts and troubles into a manageable whole. She has had security ripped away, a cruelty at any age and a double blow for a child. The method by which she comes to terms with the absolute of death, through which Ponette converses with her mother, is neat, tidy and honest.
From Ponette emerges a sense of symbiosis, a fruitful relationship between Doillon's words and his tiny cast. The elements are clumsy, unlikely and insensitive but, in partnership, they convince in their extreme depth of unforced emotion. Philippe Sarde's subtle and appropriate score helps, though there's not too much that you can do with this type of story. The film succeeds, despite a slow start, because nothing acts to trip our finely balanced belief; this tangible agony is destined to register with anyone who has a mother, making it all the more difficult to get right. Doillon triumphs because he trusts his actors and his research, allowing the film to travel further then even he might ever have dreamed of.
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