I can't believe this came out 13 years ago. I feel like I just read the raves about the central performance like... four years ago. I've been meaning to see it. The movie concerns itself with how a four year old deals with the death of her mother. As anyone can tell you, the main child performance is excellent and remarkable. As hard as it is for an adult to come to terms with death, it must be heartbreaking to watch your child attempt to deal with it.
But the movie has some big problems. I was surprised that after the early scenes which have at most one or two other actors in them, that adults go missing for the majority of the film. Unfortunately, this leaves the movie to present a certain type of "all children" scene over and over. For about ninety-five percent of its running time, toddling children are shown playing and hopelessly trying to make sense of death. It stays in that place for just too long. 40 minutes of the kids trying to comprehend super-natural rules for the dead, feels like an hour and a half. The kids can offer no insight; just verisimilitude, a lonely conceit that requires some support. For most of its length, Ponette is crying or confused. It just doesn't develop. I wish I could have seen Ponette interact with adults around her, in even the most rudimentary plot. Who are these awful parents who leave a toddler to fend for herself in wrestling with death?
Wherever the movie goes, there is no shaking its belief that the answer to its dramatic problem is more talking. Having chosen such a small scale to encounter this material, it's not a surprise when the movie has no ending. It culminates in a gratuitous, conventional and sentimental wish-fulfillment scene filmed literally; it is not a fantasy as some insist, because a child's mind cannot manufacture the details we witness of her mothers return. It's just cheap.
Both Spirit of the Beehive and The 400 Blows go more interesting places with material concerning childhood.
But the movie has some big problems. I was surprised that after the early scenes which have at most one or two other actors in them, that adults go missing for the majority of the film. Unfortunately, this leaves the movie to present a certain type of "all children" scene over and over. For about ninety-five percent of its running time, toddling children are shown playing and hopelessly trying to make sense of death. It stays in that place for just too long. 40 minutes of the kids trying to comprehend super-natural rules for the dead, feels like an hour and a half. The kids can offer no insight; just verisimilitude, a lonely conceit that requires some support. For most of its length, Ponette is crying or confused. It just doesn't develop. I wish I could have seen Ponette interact with adults around her, in even the most rudimentary plot. Who are these awful parents who leave a toddler to fend for herself in wrestling with death?
Wherever the movie goes, there is no shaking its belief that the answer to its dramatic problem is more talking. Having chosen such a small scale to encounter this material, it's not a surprise when the movie has no ending. It culminates in a gratuitous, conventional and sentimental wish-fulfillment scene filmed literally; it is not a fantasy as some insist, because a child's mind cannot manufacture the details we witness of her mothers return. It's just cheap.
Both Spirit of the Beehive and The 400 Blows go more interesting places with material concerning childhood.