Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9786304897157 Format: Color ISBN: 6304897154 Label: Fox Lorber Manufacturer: Fox Lorber Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Fox Lorber Release Date: 1999-05-25 Running Time: 92 Studio: Fox Lorber Theatrical Release Date: 1997-03-14
Fresh, attentive, and emotionally shattering, the French film Ponette is an attempt to enter the world of a 4-year-old girl whose mother has just been killed in a car accident on one of the winding roads in the mountainous countryside near Lyon. Played by pudgy, sad-eyed Victoire Thivisol (winner of a controversial but perfectly understandable Best Actress award at the 1996 Venice Film Festival), Ponette turns her grief into something else, something more childish and yet more mature. Convinced that her mother has been visiting her in her dreams, and that some day she will return in flesh and blood, Ponette invents a religion for herself with the specter of her mother at its center.
By keeping his camera eye level with his young actors (who include Matiaz Bureau Caton and Delphine Schiltz as Ponette's know-it-all cousins) and miking the children so closely that their voices have the presence and authority of grown-up speech, director Jacques Doillon taps directly into the private world of childhood. The rolling landscape that extends for Elysian miles behind the characters gradually shifts from green to brown over the course of Ponette, suggesting the presence of death in life, and also the eternal cycle of the seasons that will allow life and love to return. --Dave Kehr
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: "Catch Me A Memory" ~ A Childhood Discourse On Death, The Afterlife And The Benefits Of Magic Smarties Comment: Note: French with English subtitles.
Synopsis: Little Ponette (Victoire Thivisol) has recently lost her Mother in a car accident. While her Father is loving and sympathetic towards his daughter, he offers little solace or hope to help her come to grips with her immense loss. After the funeral Ponette is left at boarding school where she attempts to deal with her loneliness with other children her own age who soon begin to offer advise on how Ponette may be able to remain in contact with her dead Mother. Death, dreams, Heaven, Jesus, the All-Mighty are all discussed by this group of bright, young minds who try and help her make sense of it all. Even the use and benefit of magic Smarties is considered as a possible avenue to the realm of the dead. Through all the grief and sorrow Ponette eventually discovers the subtle truth about such adults concerns and finds the courage to move on and accept things for what they are. After all, "Happy spirits like your Mommy never die."
Critique: `Ponette' is a thoroughly captivating French movie from '97 starring Victoire Thivisol, the most charming little four year old ever to appear on film. It's really quite disarming to witness such emotional angst portrayed so perfectly by a little child and it's all captured so intimately by the camera one almost feels as though you could reach out and comfort her. This film belongs in a category all its own, absolutely marvelous. Remember to keep a box of Kleenex close at hand when viewing. Customer Rating: Summary: just let it go Comment: I thought this film was beautiful in it's realism. It accurately captured the way children think and act; their beliefs being amalgamations of the doctrines of their parents and their own ideals. Of course those around Ponette do not know how to help her come to terms with her loss. Some are definitely better than others at showing empathy. After seeing the movie, though, I thought the adults portrayed did an excellent job of trying to show compassion. Her father tries but has to deal with it himself, and thus isn't very successful (which seems realistic).
I tend to repress emotion while watching film. Don't bother doing that in this one; you'll only end up with a headache like I did. Customer Rating: Summary: A child's pain, up close and personal! Comment: Nobody watching this film can failed to be touched, moved, transported and transformed by it. Others here have already expressed the enormous power of the movie, and particularly of its star, Victoire Thivisol. If you're reading this to see if you should watch it, I'd say, drop everything and go buy it so you can watch it over and over. But buy a case of Kleenex (TM) too, you're going to need them!
As I watched the movie, I had the impression that director Jacques Doillon had simply found a real-life tragedy and somehow followed the participants through it with his camera. Nothing in this film gives you the impression of having been written, scripted, staged, produced. It is all so completely natural that you experience first hand the pain, the emotional agony of Ponette, as if she were your own daughter, your own sister, even your own self.
Customer Rating: Summary: Most capitivating Comment: This is by far the best movie i have ever seen in my lifetime. The child is just exceptional. Few mins into the movie and i was crying and then through out i kept crying in sobs... She has portrayed the character so beautifully for such a tender age. I kept remembering how it felt when i lost my father 5 years back. This movie will help heal anyone who has encountered loss, irrespective of your age. Please watch it. Customer Rating: Summary: Brilliant Comment: A straightforward look at death and grief through the eyes of a small child, Ponette isn't about false sentiment. It is about how children see the world, and how they cannot understand the finality of death. This rings especially true in Ponette's interactions with other children, her peers. They cannot understand her loss, and their lack of sympathy is unforced and very natural. The adults try to help but are so far removed from her and unable to remember themselves as children that they cannot understand her grief and denial.
But more then just about the inner life of a child and her grief it is about how we all deal with losses that no one but we ourselves can understand. About the platitudes we are fed by people who've not made their own peace with mortality. About those who turn away because they fear thoughts of death.
And in the end, just as in Ponette; peace and understanding, when they come, are unique to the individual alone and not given in some fireworks filled denoument but in the slightest whisper.
Victoire Thivisol is simply brilliant. Jacques Doillon is a master of his craft.
