Elif Batuman on Céline Sciamma’s new film, “Petite Maman,” and the quiet radicalism of “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” “which showed how easily a romance could dispense with many of its seemingly indispensable mainstays—conflict, a musical score, men.”
For most of November, 2020, the director Céline Sciamma didn’t have any lamps in her apartment. They were all on the set of her fifth film, “Petite Maman.” Each day, she got ready before sunrise, leaving her Paris apartment in the dark. One morning when she was running late, she rushed into her room and hit something with her foot. It hurt, a lot, but she put on her shoes and hurried to the set, where she sat around for three hours, waiting for everyone else to be ready.
Not long after the French release of “Portrait,” Haenel gave an interview in which she described being sexually abused by the director of her first film, starting when she was twelve. The abuse continued for years and caused Haenel to give up acting entirely, until she was approached for “Water Lilies.” It was the first time an actor of her stature had spoken out against sexual abuse in the French film industry.
I had asked Sciamma to bring certain materials related to her childhood and her family history. She had brought everything I requested, including childhood photographs—even a studio portrait that showed her as a laughing toddler, with a giant head, wispy hair, and tiny pearl-like teeth. How unguarded she was, in her purple sweater.
Sciamma told me about an interview that she had recorded the previous year with her grandmother Carla. Her first questions had been about going to the movies in Heliopolis. Carla had remembered everything: the price of admission, how many times a week she had attended, whether she saw double features. It had been at the cinema, Carla added, at around age ten, that she had first felt“It’s like ‘troubled,’ but more erotically,” Sciamma explained.
Watching “La Maternelle,” I was struck by resonances with “Water Lilies.” Both films take the perspective of a young girl named Marie, who is painfully obsessed with a blond love object: in Epstein’s film, the teacher played by Renaud; in Sciamma’s, the swimmer played by Haenel. Each includes multiple shots of a Marie’s wounded expression when she sees her crush make out with a guy.
With the passage of time, Sciamma has grown to increasingly identify with Cergy-Pontoise, which is one of five “new towns” built around Paris amid the postwar boom. “It was a field,” Sciamma said. “There was no town. And then a few years later there was a town,” a place with “no past and no trauma.”
Norge Siste Nytt, Norge Overskrifter
Similar News:Du kan også lese nyheter som ligner på denne som vi har samlet inn fra andre nyhetskilder.
MLB, players hope to build on common ground with Tuesday meetingMajor League Baseball’s owners and players will convene Tuesday in their continued quest to negotiate for a new collective bargaining agreement.
Les mer »
Shell’s Carbon Capture Plant Creates More Emissions Than It CapturesA Global Witness report states that Shell's Quest carbon capture plant releases more greenhouse gas emissions than it captures.
Les mer »
What Do Aaron Rodgers and Shailene Woodley ‘Agree to Disagree’ About?A quest to find out where her political (and astrologically sensitive) beliefs begin and his unchecked viral load ends.
Les mer »
Abolition Feminists Are Thinking Beyond the Violence Against Women ActThe much-touted bill relies on prisons and policing to help abuse survivors. The authors of Abolition. Feminism. Now. see a better way.
Les mer »
Rihanna Is Pregnant With A$AP Rocky's Baby: ReportsWho needs new music from Rih when she's making a whole new person instead?
Les mer »
Opinion | Guatemala's Long Quest for Justice'The time is long overdue for an honest reckoning with US Cold War support for dictatorial regimes across the Latin American continent, from the military governments in Guatemala and El Salvador to the tyrants of Operation Condor.'
Les mer »