Try to imagine your parents as children. Can you do it? Can you really do it?

Céline Sciamma’s wonderfully mischievous Petite Maman asks us to do just this, and, for a moment, makes us believe we can.

With an immense amount of empathy, warmth, and no shortage of sadness, the Portrait of a Lady on Fire writer/director subverts nearly every accepted rule of cinematic time travel to offer an earnest glimpse into the minds of children learning to grieve. At just 72 minutes, Petite Maman is as concise as it gets, but make no mistake: despite its seemingly small stature, this is a film loaded with thought-provoking concepts and emotional resonance.

The set-up behind its conceit is deceptively simple: an eight-year-old girl named Nelly meets the eight-year-old version of her mother Maion one day while playing in the woods outside of her recently deceased grandmother’s house. No explanation is given as to how or why this happens, and neither girl (played by real-life sisters Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz) seems to give it much thought. Thankfully, Sciamma wastes no time with the minutiae of time travel ethics or explanations, opting instead to focus on Nelly's burgeoning understanding of the grief her mother feels in the “present,” and therefore comes to better understand her own.

Watching the now equally-aged mother and daughter interact with each other and their environment is a rare treat in movies. Sciamma handles her material with the utmost care and compassion by cleverly layering these time-bending interactions with subtle yet poignant observations and revelations.

To this end, and with plenty of patience and acumen, she finds a way for the magic of her film’s circumstances to be a stepping stone to shared empathy rather than the cornerstone of its narrative. It’s a refreshing change of pace that helps Petite Maman tackle its weighty subjects with a sense of uncrowded wonderment instead of the heavy-handed outbursts or unnecessary resentments we’ve been conditioned to expect in dramatic cinema. 

Grade: A-minus. Rated PG. Now playing at Grail Moviehouse

(Photo: Neon)