Petite Maman Review: Céline Sciamma’s Latest Masterpiece Helps Us Process Our Mommy (and Daddy) Issues

This Petite Maman review contains light spoilers.

Last year I bought my parents a present that was really for myself. StoryWorth is a service that has people answer a question a week for a year until they’ve written something like an amateur memoir. I’ve recorded so many of my histories as a writer, sharing experiences and feelings, capturing an event in the moment or recontextualizing something with the benefit of time. But not everyone is a writer. My parents aren’t writers. I still wanted their stories.

As I’ve read their entries week by week, I’ve delighted in new information revealed, felt gratitude to have some of their oft-told stories committed for posterity, and yearned for even more. I have always yearned for even more.

I think I realized my parents were people at a younger age than most. And with that realization came a desire to know them as people, to understand their joys and their sadness. Our parents are supposed to be the people closest to us but there’s always a gulf between. When you’re queer with cishet parents that gulf is often larger.

Céline Sciamma’s (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Water Lilies) latest masterpiece finds a solution to this divide. Petite Maman is about an eight year old named Nelly whose grandma has just died. She accompanies her parents to clean her grandma’s house, feeling her own sadness and the sadness of her mom. She finds solace in the nearby woods where her mom played as a child and when her mom suddenly leaves she finds a companion in another child, Marion — her mom at her age.

This premise may suggest a Disney Channel Original Movie more than it does the work of one of our greatest film artists, but within this simplicity it finds its depth. This is a movie that aims to capture the perspective of children without forgetting the emotional intelligence so many of them carry. While many of Sciamma’s films have an epic lushness to them, Petite Maman is more reminiscent of the quiet rhythms of Tomboy.

And while that film may seem more obviously queer than this, Sciamma’s gaze is never lost. Some of the film’s best moments find Nelly and young Marion playing elaborate games of make believe. In these games, Marion plays all the femme characters and Nelly plays the masc ones. Within the socially accepted construction of childhood games, Nelly is allowed to express masculinity not just in front of her mom but with her mom’s encouragement.

If these moments — and Sciamma’s filmography — suggest a difference between Nelly and her mother, much of the film aims to show their unity. Nelly and Marion are played by Joséphine Sanz and Gabrielle Sanz, identical twin sisters. The more time the characters spend together, the harder it is to keep track of which is which. Someday Nelly will grow up and feel a distance from her mom the way we all do — and should — but for now they’re not just connected — they’re the same.

Sciamma has always been exceptional with child actors and that’s true here. Nelly and Marion are not given words beyond their years — instead Sciamma trusts their faces to fill in the simple dialogue. Whether it’s in those scenes of make believe or when they’re playing a board game or making crêpes, the easy laughter of these children makes the painful moments even harder. You want to protect them from life — child and mother, young and old.

So many moments in this film have already found a permanent place in my heart. In just 70 minutes, Sciamma has created a complete experience — a patient, emotional journey that will make you ache with the beauty and limitations of life.

There are seven more weeks in the year and I’m struggling to choose the last questions for my parents’ StoryWorth. It’s as if the perfect question could unlock some layer of their humanity and bring us closer, person to person. But there are limits to non-fiction. Céline Sciamma understands that. Some things are only possible in the imagination of a child, the power of a song, the fantasy of a story well-told and out of reach. Some things are only possible in a magical forest where time does not exist and is always running out. Some things are only possible in the darkness of a movie theatre or the glow of your screen.


Petite Maman will likely be released next year but many film festivals are still virtual so you can watch it at home as soon as next weekend through the Houston Cinema Arts Festival.

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Drew Burnett Gregory

Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She is a Senior Editor at Autostraddle with a focus in film and television, sex and dating, and politics. Her writing can also be found at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29, Into, them, and Knock LA. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Drew Burnett has written 604 articles for us.

5 Comments

  1. I loved this film – to me, it showed how it’s possible to meet and give care to the child (all the children) and adults (all of them) inside us. Haunting can be a good thing in this respect. (Also, when I saw this headline I immediately called to my partner “DREW REVIEWED PETITE MAMAN!!” and we both yelled “YAY!”. Thank you for your sensitive, expansive/expanding writing. I’m always better for reading!)

  2. Great review for an excellent film. I’ve been obsessed with Sciamma’s work since I first saw Portrait in February last year (the last film I saw in cinemas pre-pandemic!) and was hesitant to see how she could possibly follow that up, but having seen Petite Maman twice now I know I needn’t have been. It’s quiet and contemplative and seriously affecting, the emotion creeping up on you through small moments. Sciamma has an amazing talent for writing sort of emotional one-liners that feel like a punch to the stomach but never heavy handed or cliched – Petite Maman’s, “He looks like you,” and “I’m already thinking of you,” land in the same way as Portrait’s “I didn’t know you were a painter.”

    Also, the music from the future slaps.

  3. I recently saw this film and loved it. Thanks again for the great review here!

  4. I thought “Petit Maman” had a lot of queer subtext! How Nelly gets dressed for her role of the inspector in front of the mirror – gold. How young Nelly and Marion (as inspector and countess) have the doll between them, “their child.” I know Nelly and Marion are mom and daughter while being 8-year-old children, and yes, they’re playing a game with straight roles, but still – I understood this as a quiet queer moment of opportunity and possibility! Also because I knew who the film maker is… By the way, I read Nelly’s character as tomboy/baby-baby-baby-dyke. If her character came out as queer as a teenager/young adult, I would not be surprised (though this may be stereotypes and a tomboy can also be very straight when growing up).
    “In these games, Marion plays all the femme characters and Nelly plays the masc ones. Within the socially accepted construction of childhood games, Nelly is allowed to express masculinity not just in front of her mom but with her mom’s encouragement” – Drew, that is a great observation. I didn’t notice that Marion took all the femme roles and gave Nelly the masc ones, but yes, it is true! And I didn’t read it initially as Nelly being encouraged by her mom to express masculinity in this game but again, yes.
    Thanks for this amazing review, Drew! I’m very happy to read your thoughts on this marvelous film here on Autostraddle. And StoryWorth sounds wonderful.

  5. Actually, Nelly doesn’t only play masculine roles – Marion also requests her to play a femme role (the female servant of the countess, if I am not mistaken), and in the end, Nelly has two masc roles and one femme role.
    It doesn’t change what we the viewers see in the film – Nelly in masc roles – but I noticed it when watching and after having read this article (which made me jump of joy).
    Thank you Drew for your beautiful and thoughtful film review(s).

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