ThiefHott Too much of everything

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

dbdumonteil It's evident and it deserves to be mentioned. When Jacques Doillon films children (un Sac De Billes, 1975) or teenagers (la Drôlesse, 1979, Le Petit Criminel, 1990), it's what he does best and especially when he pores over the dark sides of childhood and adolescence like rejection, misunderstanding, lack of love or the death of dear close relatives. "Ponette" revolves around the latest of these things. This cute 4 year old little girl lost her mother (Marie Trintignant,a sinister omen for her tragic fate some years later) and is persuaded she will see her again. So, she embarks on a long waiting which makes her father (Xavier Beauvois) and the grown-ups incensed. Her aunt (Claire Nebout) tries to provide her solace with the help of religious creeds but does she really believe in them? At the start of a new school year, she is sent at boarding school with her cousins and in a small church, asks God to talk to her mother. Then, in a graveyard in front of her mother's grave, a miracle happens.The first thing that springs to mind after the viewing is that you would like to hail Doillon for the remarkable work he has provided with the children. He said that he listened many conversations between children for months before rewriting them in dialogs and that's the main reason why his film has a larger than life vibe. Sometimes, you even wonder if you don't watch a documentary. Working with children on a film set is very hard to do but it's evident here that Doillon did everything possible to prepare his very young actors mentally to his cinematographic demands. So, little Victoire Thivisol and her partners really live their texts and it's the world perceived with children's eyes that is one of the real motors of the film.In another extent, Doillon walks away with the honors of a tricky topic: how can the life of a beloved human being can be perceived by her children? The Scottish Peter Mullan will bring his own answer in his moody "Orphans" (1997) and here, Ponette thinks she will see her mother again because she is seduced by the religious tenets her aunt tells to her. And when her mother appears beside her in the graveyard, it's a real foray into the fantastic without the unpleasant impression of a break in tone because the little girl is the only one to experiment this. During their short moment together her mother tells her: "I won't be able to stay with you but before I definitely leave, promise me one thing: don't complain, savor life as much as you can". We aren't very far from one of the key lines in John Frankenheimer's "Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962): "the first duty of life is to live" and it's the message Doillon left in his work. Ponette is bound to have understood the lesson and to follow this piece of advice. Perhaps you will keep it in your heart too after the viewing.So, from a murky starting point, Doillon manages to create a piece of work with a startling realism and an uplifting message. If you're sensitive to these features, "Ponette" will leave you elated. Highly recommended and I would advise you to watch it several times because very young children are often difficult to decipher in their lines. So, be patient and you will be rewarded.

tenpenny Ponette is a movie you will replay in your mind for a long time. I keep remembering bits and pieces of it. The adults in the movie -- we'll leave aside Ponette's father, for now -- all sincerely try to answer Ponette's questions about death, and the after-life, to the best of their abilities, and it is hard to fault what they tell Ponette. It sounds reasonable, theologically. And yet, it is ultimately unsatisfying because, in the adults, an emotional disconnect has occurred at some point between what they ~say~ they believe and what they, deep down, ~really~ believe. Or perhaps this disconnect was always there for them -- it's impossible to tell.Ponette has the kind of metaphysical purity and innocence that the nineteenth-century French philosopher Jules Lequyer praised in The Hornbeam Leaf. Such questions! Such observations! No adult would think to say, as Ponette did, when her cousin pointed out that his grandfather didn't come back from the dead, "No one was waiting for him." No adult would think that it mattered whether anyone was waiting. Ponette's cousin may not share Ponette's convictions, but he takes them seriously. When his mother remarks to him that Ponette is "playing" at waiting for her mother to return, he corrects his mother: "No, she's really waiting."Ponette's father, unlike the other adults in the movie, is an atheist. And yet, when Ponette is with him at the end of the movie, describing to him her just-concluded encounter with her mother, he makes no attempt to disillusion her, which is certainly unlike his earlier behavior. Why? Earlier in the movie, in a remarkable scene, we saw the tension between the two of them: his atheism, his attempt to impose it on her, and her unwillingness to accept it. How many four-year-olds could stand up to their fathers like that, and on something so important?At the boarding school that Ponette attends, she meets Ada, who is called "a child of God" by the other kids, apparently because she openly asserts her (Jewish) faith. But surely it is Ponette who is a child of God. It is Ponette, alone among the children, who makes a real attempt to connect with God -- to speak to Him, and even, at times, to berate Him. After what she describes as her "second prayer," Ponette is already light-years ahead of the other children spiritually.One review I read of this movie described Ponette as an "old soul." I agree, but would go beyond that: She has the potential someday to be a great spiritual leader, if her spirituality is not crushed out of her later. To me, this is the great "open question" at the end of the film: What becomes of such a soul? The vagaries of life being what they are, one can imagine that it could go either way for Ponette.Perhaps, in the end, Ponette's father lets it go -- his daughter's fantastic tale of reuniting with her mother -- because something in her eyes, something in her mien, tells him that any further attempt to gainsay his daughter's faith would be futile.----"The truth is a cry: it is the cry of life, which says that it is life and that it wants to live." -- Michel Henry

PickUrFeetInPoughkeepsie I do not believe I have ever seen a film that comes anywhere close to "Ponette" before. While I would not consider it my favorite film that I could watch over and over and over, it is easily one of the stronger movies I have seen. Rarely do I view a film that is so precise and cohesive even though it simultaneously plays off so many different themes, like sentimentallity, nostalgia (we all remember the strange social world of the playground though maybe some of us don't want to go back), the pain of loss, and (gasp) humor. Most directors and actors would get lost at one point or another, not knowing how to segue or shift from one tone to another, but here there is nary a problem with doing so, which is especially amazing considering the leading lady has been walking and talking for about as long as it takes to make a bowl of oatmeal. The best scenes for me were the trials that the older girl put Ponette through. The dumpster one was especially great. Considering that early on in the film I sympathized with Ponette when she cried during some scenes, I felt bad laughing at her suffering through the tests, especially when her hand got caught when the dumpster lid came down. I believe some of this movie was improv, so for all I know, the poor girl really got her hand hurt, but I remember those type of moments as a child; those tests of stamina, durability, agility, etc. I put my younger brother through some horrific ones. One time he broke his arm. How could I have been so cruel?A performance artist/singer named Suran Song recommended I watch this film. In Suran's performance, she actually uses slides of the scene where the mean little punk Antoine is playing with Ponette on the playground and begins to verbally abuse her about her mothers death. The context Suran used the scene in her act seemed to be making a statement about how people treat others in society, even when very young. Interesting how she sort of sampled an individual scene and made it into a story of her own, because it plays much differently in the film as a whole (obviously) since we know the characters.Probably not for everyone, but certainly for those who want to a see a piece of work very left-of-center yet not oddball in any way; simply a viewpoint that wouldn't normally seem worth making an entire feature film out of because it would be hard to pull off. Ponette is not only pulled off... it goes flying to the moon.

Peter Lusby 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.