Ponette (Ponette)
Director – Jacques Doillon – 1996 – France – Cert. PG – 97m
*****
A four-year-old girl must come to terms with the car crash death of her mother – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 26th 1998
A truly extraordinary film defying easy categorisation, the plot of Ponette is essentially very simple – a four-year-old girl must come to terms with the car crash death of her mother. If Hollywood had attempted anything like this, you can almost guarantee the material would be cynically manipulated to tug at the heartstrings, go out of its way not to offend anyone and strive to reap maximum rewards at the box office by pleasing as many people as possible. Ponette, however, comes not from Hollywood but France where such things are approached very differently.
Much is said in these pages and elsewhere about actors, but when a four year old scoops Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, you know something remarkable is going on. You’d be justified in wondering how far children can genuinely act and how far they are merely being exploited by unscrupulous film makers, but here, established director Jacques Doillon (Le Jeune Werther, 1993) and crew have taken great care that the children involved never confused the demands of their acting with reality (anyway, why should they?)… Read the rest