Review of the movie 'Ponette'

 

Just last night I saw "Ponette", a 1996 French movie. It had been on my list for some time, but it just made its way into Netflix's DVD collection. It is about a 4-year-old girl (Ponette) whose mother dies in a car crash, and her efforts to come to terms with the loss, including being unclear on whether her mother might come back, or at least speak to her. Emotional intelligence suggests she could use some patient listening and affection from the adults around her, but they instead are annoyed with her for not accepting her mother's death.

Most of the characters are children around her age. Ponette (and the other children too) are doing a terrific job acting -- not just saying lines. And it is not just a few lines here and there. It is a full movie's worth. That acting is extraordinary in it own right. Ponette is not helped by having an atheist father (who can only visit briefly now and then) but an aunt and other adults who give different versions of Catholic theology, garbled by the other children's questionable interpretations as well. My enthusiasm was tempered a bit when I had to remind myself that it was the director who wrote the lines the children say. It is a tribute to their acting ability that I was so easily taken in to think that was what they were saying and thinking in the moment. The director has picked a movie's worth of entirely plausible lines.

This aspect reminds me a bit of <this stunning piece>  where a mother has her small daughter say things the daughter has said to her over time. There is no pretense that she is saying them in the moment, but her voice in restating them makes them more compelling.

Is her mother to be resurrected now, or later? Jesus was resurrected, but that is different. God is listening to our prayers and answers them (Ponette's skepticism on this point arises earlier in life than most people's). Her mother is at the right hand of God. Ponette would like to die so she can join her mother in heaven. One boy cruelly tells her that her mother's death is her fault, and only very bad children make their mothers die. Her mother comes to her in a dream, but dreams are not real. One girl says she herself is a child of God but to get to be one you have to pass a series of tests. You could imagine a Unitarian-Universalist mini-course on the theology Ponette struggles with (just kidding).

The one problem with the movie (and on searching I found that Roger Ebert agreed with me) is that Ponette's mother makes an appearance in the flesh at the very end. I initially thought this might be some aunt who was taking the role of her mother in an effort to help her, but it becomes clear that it is magical realism instead. Ponette has been dealing with a confusing and harsh reality up to that point, and the movie betrays us (and Ponette) by giving it up. But the movie stands on its own without that ending.