Céline Sciamma’s beautiful fairytale about a girl who meets her mother as a child in the woods is an artistic masterstrokeBest films of 2021: the listMore on the best culture of 2021Céline Sciamma’s beautiful fairytale reverie is occasioned by the dual mysteries of memory and the future: simple, elegant and very moving. Joséphine Sanz plays Nelly, the eight-year-old daughter of Marion (Nina Meurisse); Marion’s mother has just died in a care home. Marion and her partner (Stéphane Varupenne) take Nelly on a difficult journey to her late mother’s home, where she grew up, and the memories come flooding back – particularly that of a secret hut she built in the woods adjoining the house. Marion is overwhelmed with grief and leaves Nelly alone with her dad.
Playing in the woods she comes across what appears to be a half-finished hut in a clearing. A girl waves happily to her, asking for help making it. She is the mirror image of Nelly (played by Gabrielle Sanz, evidently Joséphine’s twin sister) and announces that her name is … Marion. They go back to Marion’s house, an eerie mirror-image of Nelly’s mother’s childhood home. And there Nelly meets Marion’s kindly, withdrawn, thirtysomething mum, who walks painfully with a cane.