When Ponette is four, her mother dies accidentally. She starts living with her aunt, but she cannot cope with her mother’s disappearance. She withdraws from all the people around her, and continues to speak to her mother, convinced that she will come back.

It wouldn’t be overstating the case to say that Victoire Thivisol’s performance in Jacques Doillon’s heartbreaking drama stands among the greatest in all of cinema. Captured somewhere between fiction and reality, she creates a sense of an inner life that is at once touching and extraordinary.