Ponette

Rating:
Summary: Bravo!
Review: I've seen this movie 3 times and love it more each time! Victoire Thivisol and the other young actors are so natural and convincing, it is difficult to believe they are acting. I found myself angry at the adults surrounding Ponette for their lack of understanding and support of this little girl's grief. Instead of encouraging her to express her emotions and fears in her own childlike way, they expect her to keep these feelings inside and move on quickly.

Rating:
Summary: Ponette is a wonderfully acted, touching film.
Review: I cannot begin to describe my admiration for this film. The four-year-old actress, Victoire Thivosol, who plays Ponette, delivers a heart-breakingly real protrayal of a young girl reeling from her mother's recent death. The film forces you to imagine the pain of losing your mother at such a young age and it inspires you to live your life to the fullest. The scene at the end of the film where Ponette is visited by her mother brought me to tears like no movie ever has. I found myself weeping for this child and her loss as if it were my own. If you see one movie this year, see this one. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: OK, but not great.
Review: An avid viewer of foreign films, and a doting, sappy father of young daughters, I was expecting to love this movie, particularly in light of the stellar reviews it has garnered from others. Perhaps my expectations were too high.

Ponette is a well crafted little film that does, as others point out, succeed in presenting the children it portrays as unaffected and genuine. It contains a few moments of genuine sadness and gentle humor. The young protagonist and her cousins are charming, and present realistic glimpses of children's views on life and death. They do not seem to be acting -- and that is no mean feat.

But technical prowess and loveable cherubs do not a compelling movie make. The whole film -- up until the penultimate scene in the graveyard -- is a series of vignettes that are little more than observations. We are allowed to act as unobtrusive observers as Ponette mourns, her young friends dispense their varying forms of childhood wisdom, and the children seek the talisman that will set their world aright and reunite Ponette with her departed mother. Again, some of these scenes are charming, but there is little in the way of narrative or dramatic progression. By two thirds of the way through the film, the dynamic is predictable and (dare I say) even a little boring. My wife (a loving, tender-hearted mom herself) lost interest in the film well before the end.

And then there is that penultimate scene, where Ponette is reunited temporarily with her mother. I do not have a problem with that plot element in the abstract (as some reviewers have), and I appreciate the final message from that meeting ("She told me to learn to be happy"). But the portrayal of the mother by Marie Trintignant felt very out of place -- coarse and even grating -- when compared with the feel of the rest of the film. It's hard to express propositionally, but that performance just did not fit.

In sum, watching Ponette is a bit like following around a group of 4-year-olds, listening to them grapple with the meaning of life, death, and love for a couple hours. It was sporadically charming, but lacked enough substance to sustain the entire film. Perhaps I would (and will) appreciate it more once my own young children have grown out of their charming innocence, but I was surprised to find myself disappointed by Ponette, and expecting more from such a lauded film.

Rating:
Summary: An amazing portrayal of loss from the eyes of a child
Review: This movie is so visually and emotionally stirring that you will find you no longer notice that you are reading subtitles. The performances in the movie are just incredible. I believed that this child had lost her mother. I wailed and sobbed with her. You will, too. Watch with a box of Puffs with lotion...you'll need them to catch your tears.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful, inspiring film
Review: The four-year old Victoire Thivosol makes her debut in this unforgettable film. The film's writer and director interviewed hundreds of children, taking careful notes. This thoughtful process brings to the film a realistic and insightful view into the world as seen with the mind a child. Thivosol won the best actress award at the Venice film festival for her incredible performance (see Roger Ebert's review at the Chicago Sun Times web site).

The film, set in the beautiful southern French countryside, tells the story of a young girl coping with the loss of her mother. As Ponette seeks to reconcile herself with the loss, she is confronted with a variety of beliefs from children and adults about where her mother is. Often these views contradict each other and even challenge Ponette personally. With a simple faith, she both inspires and worries her caregivers as she watches for the return of her mother.

Fully appreciating this film requires patience and attention, and you might want to have a box of Kleenex tissues nearby. But it is very rewarding. As the films trailer remarks, this is more than a film about the mourning of death. It is about the celebration of life.

Rating:
Summary: A deeply spiritual film
Review: Victoire Thivisol is very good, extraordinary really. The breath and depth of the part she plays would challenge the greatest actresses. She is also very beautiful. She has beautiful eyes and thick, luxurious hair. She was named best actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1996 for her work in this film. She was then four-years-old. Amazing.

But this is also a tour de force for Director Jacques Doillon who, one can see, guided the children to be actors, while they in turn taught him about their world. The magic on the screen is the magic in the world of the children and what they feel. We see them cope with the existence they have been thrust into. We watch as they struggle to make sense of it through experience, fantasy and play. We see how they learn to distinguish between what adults think is real and what they themselves discover is real. Her father is a rationalist and feels that his daughter's prolonged sadness about her mother's accidental death is "crazy." He tells her he will not yell at her if she stops acting crazy. She wisely tells him she will. Already she is learning to placate the world and its madness; already we see that she is working out what is "crazy" and what is not, and right now she is not sure which is which. Her father does not believe in a personal god, but the women taking care of her do, and so do the other children. She does not know what to believe but she wants to believe in anything that will bring her mother back or allow her to talk to her mother.

One may wonder how Doillon was able to get the children to be so good. It's clear he had to immerse himself in their world and win their respect. He had to listen to them and remember what it was like to be a child. These children are creating their world, as all children are, right before our eyes, and usually we do not see because we are so filled with our own lives and with our preconceptions. The children must learn the world and experience it all for themselves, regardless of what we think. Doillon shows us that process through the eyes of the children and especially through the extraordinary eyes of Victoire Thivisol, who will steal your heart and soul, I promise.

There is something of the spirit of the lives of the saints in this film of and about a child. We see this in Ponette's struggle to believe in a God who took her mother away and would not answer her. She is a saint as a little girl, and she is her very own doubting Thomas. But she does not give in to despair. She talks to God and when God does not answer, her rationalist streak takes hold and she demands to know why He doesn't answer her. When she is blamed by a mean little boy for causing her mother's death, she doubts herself and wants to die. Pretending is not enough for her.

Unlike some others I thought the ending was good. I think the problem was the way the latter part of the scene in the graveyard was filmed with the false color, too hurriedly, and (especially) the unconvincing performance of Marie Trintignant who played her mother.

The final words of the film, "She told me to learn to be happy" are at once great words of wisdom that we all might heed; but at the same time these words are her first compromise with a profane world, in a sense her first lie, her first "sin." It is fitting that they were spoken to her father with the underlying understanding that men will want you to be happy and will be dissatisfied with you if you are not. Her pleasing little half smile from the car seat for him shows us that she has learned she will have to put on a face for the world, and she will. Nonetheless one feels there will be a part of her that will remain hers alone.

This is a beautiful, touching, and spiritually moving film, an original work of art.

Rating:
Summary: Comme se, comme sa...
Review: Victoire Thivisol is perhaps the youngest child ever to play the leading role in a film. Sure, there are lots of films showing cute little babies and children, but usually they have a walk on part. They are not the main character. And, there are a number of wonderful child actors. But there has never been a child who could act as well as this child.

I was mesmerized by this film. First, Ponette looks so much like my granddaugher who was four at the time, I could not take my eyes off her face. Second, because my granddaughter was four, I had a good basis of comparison for four-year old behavior. Third, I am sad to say that my granddaughter's father had died recently and I had a basis for observing a child's reaction to the loss of a parent.

I don't know why Victoire Thivisol didn't win every conceivable award at the time "Ponette" was released. She is so real, she is so loveable. You want to take her in your arms and hold her. The interaction between Ponette and her father, Ponette and her Aunt, Ponette and her cousins and school friends is truth itself. At some points, such as when the father stops the car on the road and lifts Ponette onto the hood to talk to her face to face about her mother, I thought I was watching reality.

Ponette has to be one of the best films about children using child actors ever made. It doesn't matter whether you speak French or can read English subtitles, you will understand Ponette.

Rating:
Summary: Another great French movie with great kids
Review: I'm not sure why my favorite French films seem to have great child actors in them, but the actress playing Ponette I think is the best I've ever seen. While so many films turn kids into junior adults, Ponette is very much a little girl with a kids gulibility. And the actress playing Ponette does not seem like she is acting at all. She makes it seem as if this really was happening and the filmmakers had hidden cameras filming her. It is a wonderful film, which I can't rave enough about. It truly finds your soul (if you have one). Grab some tissue and watch this movie.

Rating:
Summary: an emotional movie
Review: This movie, with a simple story line (actually there is not much of a story), played the emotional angle well. Thivisol was remarkably effective as Ponette. I grade the movie low because the story was hardly original (the most predictable and cliched ending played out at the end) and its effectiveness was dependent entirely on the performance of Thivisol. It also does not help that the DVD is not up to the expected standard: scene indexes are only accesible from the menu; only 1.33:1 ratio (the scene at the cemetery indicates that the original movie was in a wider format, with the planted flowers got cut off). On the positive side, the transfer quality is good, with sharp color, clear subtitles and economic, but effective sound.

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Film
Review: I can't say enough about this film. It is one of the most heartbreaking, intelligent looks at the world of childhood I have ever seen. The performance by the lead actress Victoire Thisvol (who was three and a half at the time of filming) is one of the greatest I have ever seen, perhaps the best ever given by a child