Wonder and loss in Céline Sciamma's Petite maman

Abstract

This article reads Céline Sciamma's 2021 film Petite maman in relation to the widespread isolation and loss experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic. The film offers a poignant meditation on the mother–child relationship and the vital role of wonder and imagination in mourning. Drawing on Descartes and feminist philosophers Luce Irigary and Catherine Malabou, this article seeks to understand why wonder is so critical to empathy and presence. It then traces the ways in which Sciamma introduces wonder into the film: through the circulation of stories and objects, through a heightened diegetic use of sound that draws the spectator in, through references to fairy tales, through an elastic approach to time and a blurring of spatial and generic boundaries, through the positioning of the camera at the child's eye level, through an astonishing series of doubles and mirrors that provoke curiosity rather than fear, and through a queering of the characters’ relations to one another and to their surroundings. Ultimately, Sciamma's Petite maman explores the creative and reparative potential of wonder in forging more expansive, fluid notions of self, opening up new intergenerational connections among women, and coming to terms with the loss.