Little Girl Blue
Mona Achache / France / 2023 / 96 min
Marion Cotillard gives a hypnotic performance in a phenomenal docu-hybrid that charts one woman's dramatic life in the cultural bohemian milieu of Paris in the 60s and 70s. A reconstruction of a dark family history and an artist's attempt to understand her mother's tragedy.
Acting is the art of transformation, and rarely have you seen a person transform so fundamentally before your eyes as when Marion Cotillard takes on the role of filmmaker Mona Achache’s mother Carole, who took her own life at the age of 63 in 2016. A tragedy that her daughter has dedicated her film to mapping and understanding. She and Cotillard meet in an empty apartment in Paris, where the walls and floors are covered with photographs and letters, as if it were a scene from a detective film – and it almost is. Together, Achache and Cotillard reconstruct moments from her mother’s life in the cultural bohemian milieu of Paris in the 60s and 70s, where at a young age she socialised with literary notables such as Marguerite Duras and Jean Genet – and it was not always as happy as it sounds. The result is unique both as a process and as a work: A brave film that confronts the traumas of the past through the art of cinema.