Released 1996
Stars Victoire Thivisol, Delphine Schiltz, Matiaz Bureau Caton, Marie Trintignant, Xavier Beauvois
Directed by Jacques Doillon

"Ponette" enters the mystery of a little girl's mind at the age of 4, when she has all of her intelligence but little experience and information. Ponette has been in a car crash. Her arm was broken. "Mommy may die,'' her father tells her. How does she deal with that information? What does death mean to a 4-year-old? How can it be dealt with? The most extraordinary thing about "Ponette" is the way it faces these questions while staying resolutely within the focus of the child's mind. It follows the little girl out of the hospital and to her aunt's house, where with two cousins about her own age she tries to puzzle out what is happening to her.

Played by Victoire Thivisol, Ponette is a small, blond, round-faced girl, very solemn much of the time, and the film follows her with an intensity that requires her to give a real performance--not as a "child actor," but as a real actor who has to negotiate tricky dialogue and situations. She does. "In the matter of child acting," writes Stanley Kauffmann, "this is the most extraordinary picture I know." (Thivisol's performance won the best actress award at the 1996 Venice Film Festival.)

In preparing the dialogue for Ponette and her young friends, Jacques Doillon, the writer-director, interviewed hundreds of children, I understand. What he captures is the logical way that kids proceed from what little they know to what, therefore, must be the case. As Ponette copes with the fact that her mother is in a coffin and will soon be under the ground, her little friend explains about crucifixes and pillows under the head and what happens to bodies after a long time, and adds helpfully: "I like living above ground. I really hate skulls."

The film is not entirely about the aftermath of death. Its real subject is the development of intelligence in childhood. How do kids interact with their environment and learn from their friends, and fashion theories and test them out? There is a sequence where the children play a game involving an empty dumpster. Is it dangerous? Perhaps. Do they benefit from the game? Yes. Because city streets are no longer considered safe for children, they're kept inside more than earlier generations. Street games are no longer played. In "Ponette" we see how through trial and error these children learn from the lessons and adventures of the neighborhood.

I can't even begin to imagine how Doillon obtained these performances from Thivisol and her friends. Watching this film is like eavesdropping on bright children and observing the process by which their intelligence builds their personalities, their beliefs, their strategies and their minds.

Summary by Roger Ebert

From start to finish, Thivisol is nothing short of amazing. This is the kind of portrayal that would be labeled as a standout from an actor of any age, but, from someone who's only four, it's astonishing. A share of the credit must be lavished upon Doillon -- it takes a masterful film maker to elicit this kind of unforced performance from a child. Had Thivisol shown a hint of artifice, Ponette would not have worked. The strength and consistency of her acting keeps this film on a high level. Even if the movie was not so moving and evocative, it would be worth viewing simply for the character that Thivisol brings to life.

James Berardinelli