Petite Maman

Copy and pasted thoughts from the 'What have you watched recently' thread. Definitely in the top three films of the year I've seen (tied with the two Ryusuke Hamaguchi films), and one I can see myself revisiting regularly as it has the magnificent sort of 'warm, friendly hug' energy of something like My Neighbour Totoro.

in her follow-up to the transcendent Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Celine Sciamma continues to make her stake to greatest working filmmaker with this impossibly gorgeous little movie. It’s best to let its surprises unravel at the film’s own careful pace, but it’s the rare film that captures a very particular magic: a tale of childhood wonder, sadness and curiosity that actually feels more real and true thanks to matter-of-fact magical realism. It’s not even 75 minutes long, and yet it delivers in ways far beyond it modest running time and scope (what a joy to see Sciamma make her smallest-scale film after her largest-scale one). Just the loveliest film you’ll see in a cinema this year… or most other years for that matter.