Germaine de Staël opined that “we understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love.” Although the loss of loved ones is part of the natural order, it can be even more devastating when the loss is visited upon the young. As in The Body, a superior episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer that saw characters used to dealing with the paranormal face a natural death, the fragility of life will always hit hardest those who think it is all ahead of them when they are confronted with just how little that might be. While we will hopefully have reached an age and maturity to understand and cope with such grief when it visits, the younger we are, the harder the reality is to understand. 

In Jacques Doillon’s Ponette, the titular character, played by Victoire Thivisol in a truly remarkable performance, is a four-year-old girl who survives the car crash that kills her mother. Left by her grieving father with an aunt and young cousins, Ponette must come to understand that her mother will remain absent from her life. Since, as Thackeray put it, mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children,” grappling with this poorly comprehended idea causes the little girl no small amount of anguish. With her aunt offering solace in the form of religious beliefs, Ponette adapts these to her own way of thinking, wanting nothing more than just to see her mother again. Possessed of singular insight, this is a uniquely and heartbreakingly moving portrait of coming to terms with a sudden death.

Notes by Kevin Coyne.

Screening as part of our season This Mortal Coil.