Avis des critiques

It's the best film I've seen for capturing what it feels like to be a kid since "Whistle Down the Wind"... It's a lovely, lyrical little film with a startlingly good performance by little Ponette.

Insightful, poignant and heartfelt... It's hard to say whether Thivisol is acting or merely taking direction well, but either way, with eyes that seem to look ever-inward and a face that has forgotten how to smile, she comes across as more tragic little girl than actress.

"Ponette" accomplishes something that's quite rare and extraordinary in the field of storytelling: This exceptional French film authentically gets inside the mind of a 4-year-old child and shows us the world from her point of view... The unique sensibility and gentle confidence [the director] demonstrates in "Ponette" make it clear that this Frenchman is a storyteller in possession of distinctive insight. Childhood has no better friend than Jacques Doillon.

Thivisol represents what is pure and honest in the movie, but one may have doubts about the work as a whole... The result is touching, but not always convincing.

Like the film itself, [Victoire Thivisol] is a wonder.

The most extraordinary thing about "Ponette" is the way it faces [its dramatic] questions while staying resolutely within the focus of the child's mind... 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.

At once audacious and assured, the film goes even further than Rolf de Heer’s thematically similar The Quiet Room in dramatizing the severe emotional consequences of tragedy on a young girl... In every conceivable way, Doillon is alert to the subtle psychological shadings of Ponette’s reactions and her particular resilience and tenacity.

Jacques Doillon’s extraordinary drama about a child’s-eye view of heartbreak, makes sorrow absolutely mesmerizing... [He] encourages his young ”stars” to talk about death, God, and loss, with a dignified respect for their opinions. He is rewarded with utter honesty and an emotionally gripping portrait of childhood.

[The film] is so extraordinarily sensitive to the emotional landscape of childhood that only the hardhearted will not feel a vestigial tug of childish terror of parental loss and abandonment. But for all the sadness it bares, ''Ponette'' is far from a tear-drenched portrait of helpless suffering.