“Ponette” is a 1996 French drama about a 4-year-old little girl who loses her mother in a car accident. I have never felt such heartache or been in the presence of so much silent pain, ever. And it’s mind-blowing that a TODDLER can act like that. There are many points I need to talk about when it comes to this movie, all important, I started four times to write this piece…To me, it’s one of the best movies ever, as simple as it looks, it’s right there with the 1998 ”Life is beautiful”, but maybe even more impressive, because, as I said, the main character is played by a toddler. Ingeniously, the whole movie is filmed at a low level, with the adults entering the focus at knee level and then bending over to talk to Ponette, then leaving. Life through the eyes of a four years old girl who does not have the capacity to deal with the death of her mother. She moves constantly, just like toddlers do, always restless, self-comforting, looking desperately for a way to stop her world from spinning since her main source of normal, comfort and happiness is gone.
Beyond the obvious aspect of her devastating pain, to me it felt unbearable the lack of love, support or empathy from those around her. Her father is mostly absent, leaving her with cousins and then sending her to board-school, and even when he visits her, he lashes out angrily against the “stupidity” of her mother, or against Ponette’s fantasies and sorrow.
He never tries to understand her, to explain anything to her. She moves about with her broken arm and broken heart, searching for answers and comfort, crying or waiting for her dead mother to return to her. It struck me how all the things we adults consider “conversation topics” or “choices” or “ways of life”, impact our children without us realizing it. Ponette struggles between her mom’s teachings and her aunt and her catholic school teachers, who are all firm believers and tell her about heaven, 
about Jesus resurrecting Lazarus, about all people one day resurrecting to join God and Jesus in heaven and in her 4 year-old mind, all that is as real as her own person. Nobody bothers to explain what is mystical and what is physically real. No one explains “faith” to her. She believes firmly in the physical return of her mother, spending all the time waiting for her, refusing to play or even eat. Then she states the “magic words” uttered by Jesus to resurrect the girl in the Bible “Talitha cumi”, she prays to God Almighty and cries and it’s gut wrenching to watch her every 
night talking to her mom in a whispered voice and blowing kisses to her in heaven until she falls asleep. On the other side of all the religious quotes and righteousness, stands her father who is an atheist and gets angry to see her believing and chasing hopes and calls her “sick in the head” and “crazy” because she seems unable to let go of her mother.
It struck me then to realize how disconcerting all these different things influence the pure and soft core of a child. Whatever they hear from us, they believe and it’s so easy to forget to explain things to them. Death is hard enough, especially in a mother-child situation, it’s so devastating, it’s the child’s whole world breaking to pieces, all the more at such a tender age, toddler years…You go through the movie and it feels like it’s always going deeper in pain, there is always a new level she reaches, like she never comes up for air. She talks to her cousins and lovingly describes her mother smelling like candy and her arms and hugs and her hair, as she continues to wait for her. As if the conflict between the religious rites and the anger and lack of comfort from her father were not enough, she gets bullied in the yard at playtime
and she is told that her mother died because of her, that only the moms of bad children die. She fights through and struggles for balance but ends up so sad that she finally tells her cousin that she just wants to die and join her mom. And, right when you think it’s about as bad as it can be, the last devastating scene is up when she goes by herself to the cemetery and starts digging the ground around her mother’s grave, crying and mixing her tears with dirt, calling her until she falls exhausted asleep on the grave. 
The inexplicable happens, her mother appears and hugs her. It’s not a dream, she lifts Ponette up and hugs her tight, laughing softly: ” so, I smell like candy?” Amazed and finally comforted, Ponette basks in the happiness of that moment. As they hug, her mother does what any grownup should have done : she tells her the truth. Lovingly but with no embellishments, she tells Ponette that she must move on and live her life, finding a way to play and laugh because she wouldn’t be coming back. 
And, as Ponette fights back tears with that face and those eyes that get printed into your heart forever once you see them, her mom explains to her that her head and chest were badly hurt in the accident and that she had been in a lot of pain. She lovingly adds that it was her fault, her selfishness to choose to die because it was harder to fight for life, and asks for forgiveness for that. The conversation then reveals the big stop in the way of Ponette ever moving on: she is terrified that people will forget her mom, because she noticed that everyone stopped talking about her after the funeral. So, mom explains that she will live in Ponette, with every memory, and, unlike all the other adults that heard Ponette’s little games of imagination and scolded her or called her crazy, the mom joins in and they play chasing dreams and getting silly while they walk together a long way.
Ponette then says she feels cold, so her mom gives her a red sweater she brought along just for her, and before they reach the school, where Ponette is supposed to meet her father to go on a trip together, her mom says good-bye, and asks her to live her life fully, that she does not want a sad child and that she will not visit her again. She reminds her of her big love and encourages her to be brave, and Ponette goes on alone as her mother disappears. The first reaction for the viewers is to say “ok, it was all a dream”, but…as Ponette gets in the car with her dad, he makes a remark on how he had not seen that red sweater since the funeral, that it belonged to her mother. And for the first time in all the movie, Ponette smiles briefly as she gets in the car.
What to make of it? Is it a dream? Is it the answer to her heartbreaking prayers to “The Almighty”? It’s not clear, probably not meant to clarify anything, it’s not important, but it gets Ponette to the safe place she needed, in order to stay sane and survive. An exquisite movie, a terrible journey of discovery, the end of carefree childhood and the first harsh bite of reality.
Victoire Thivisol, the star actress who plays this part is one of the best actors I have seen in my life. Its not even about the crying scenes, its the expression of her eyes through the whole 2 hours, all that raw emotion exposed while the camera is inches to her, most of the movie is made of extreme close-ups to her face.
She went on to be the youngest actress ever to win the Volpi Cup Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival, and then a few years later, to play alongside Juliette Binoche in “Chocolat”(2000). It’s definitely a movie worth watching, but, like any drama, you’ll probably only want to see it once in your life.
