Petite Maman re-imagines time-travel stories in the gentlest way

polygon.com:

Movies have taught us that time travel is dangerous. Even if you aren’t being pursued across epochs by homicidal cyborgs or futuristic hitmen, there’s the chance that you might rip open the space-time continuum, create a paradox that negates your very existence, or turn into a Claymation spaghetti monster like at the end of Timecop. And heaven forbid you step on the wrong butterfly!

Petite Maman is a much less stressful time-travel experience. For the follow-up to her 2019 arthouse hit Portrait of a Lady on Fire, French director Céline Sciamma has created the sweetest of sci-fi movies, the gentlest of time-travel tales, a compact little 72-minute film in which not much is said, but a great deal is communicated. It’s only slightly facetious to compare Petite Maman’s premisetoBack to the Future: Both films are about a young person who goes back in time and meets their mother when she was their age. Don’t worry, though. In Sciamma’s film, there’s no weird sexual tension.

Joséphine Sanz makes her screen debut as Nelly, an 8-year-old girl who, as the film opens, is going from room to room to say goodbye to the residents of her grandma’s nursing home. Nelly’s grandmother recently died, so Nelly and her parents are closing up her room before driving out to the family’s country home for a bigger clean-up job. Once they arrive, Nelly’s parents have some sort of off-camera discussion — we never find out what about — and Nelly’s mom (Nina Meurisse) goes back to the city. Nelly is left behind with her dad (Stéphane Varupenne), who says they can leave as soon as they pack up the last of Grandmère’s things.

Puttering around the nearly empty house — little is left now but dusty shadows, crumbling school assignments, and ghostly