Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman is the kind of film that feels like a secret a delicate, 72-minute reverie that lingers long after its gentle ending. Following the luminous Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Sciamma trades grand romance for quiet alchemy, crafting a fairy tale so subtle you might mistake it for memory.

Eight-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) wanders the emptied house of her recently deceased grandmother, her small hands sorting through relics of a life she barely knew. When she meets Marion (Gabrielle Sanz), a girl her age building a fort in the woods, the film unfolds with the logic of a dream one where time bends, mothers become playmates, and grief softens into understanding. The twins’ performances are miracles of naturalism, their conversations stripped of precociousness, brimming instead with the unselfconscious gravity of childhood.

Sciamma’s genius lies in her restraint. There are no sweeping revelations, no forced catharsis just the quiet thrill of a child’s perspective, where the magical and mundane coexist without explanation. The cinematography (by Claire Mathon) bathes autumn forests and half-packed rooms in tender light, each frame a whispered invitation to lean closer.

At its core, Petite Maman is about the stories we never get to hear the mothers before they were mothers, the goodbyes we rehearse too late. It’s a film that could vanish like a breath on glass, yet its tenderness etches itself into your bones.