Customer Reviews

Ponette

5 star:		(91)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Amazon asks us to rate the DVD, not the film, so here is my assessment. Anyone who is a fan of French film should stop buying DVDs produced by Fox Lorber. "Ponette" is produced by Fox Lorber, and once again the company has demonstrated it knows nothing about cinema as an art form and cares little about exploiting the inherent advantages of the DVD medium.

Originally shot in widescreen format, Fox Lorber has given us "Ponette" in reduced form (1.33 to 1). While many of the film's shots are close-ups, the reduced aspect ratio severely hampers the contrasting visual effect of the wide panoramic shots of the splendid lyonnais countryside.

In addition, Fox Lorber shortchanges foreign-film aficionados and language teachers by allowing no user control of the film's subtitles. Finally, this DVD lacks a chronometer (time remaining, time elapsed) for easy scene/shot retrieval. The "extras" Fox Lorber gives users are not worth mentioning, and were not worth the very tiny effort Fox Lorber made to include them.

In short, "Ponette" is a wonderful film that is definitely worth seeing (try renting it through Facets if your local video store doesn't carry it), but this Fox Lorber-produced DVD is definitely NOT worth spending your money on.

When Fox Lorber decides to start devoting care, effort, and money into its DVDs, then people should reward this through their purchases. Until then, as long as Fox Lorber gives us second-rate products, we should refuse to give them our money.

I'll skip the movie itself review. You can easily tell that it's a great movie by all the other reviews. What I'll focus on is the DVD itself. One point for it is that it has a menu. It goes down hill there as the DVD only has Stereo sound. This might be due to the original's lack of budget but I began to wonder when I see this classic movie is only pan and scan. Fox/Lorber has seen fit to put hard subtitles whether or not we can understand French. This is a DVD which could have been a lot better. It's a shame that we get such great movies done in substandard DVDs. Bowfinger is going to be 16:9, Widescreen, and Pan&Scan; plus DTS sound & lots of extras. Couldn't Fox/Lorber have done this movie with at least a widescreen version and removeable subtitles? Look at A Better Tomorrow to see how good a foriegn film can be put onto a DVD. It's really a shame to have the shoddy DVD for such a fine movie. And it could have been so much more.

There are some great films about kids--Kolya, My Life As A Dog, The Grand Highway, Forbidden Games--and even some of the Disney films aren't bad, such as the remake of Parent Trap. Not to mention the Our Gang series and the Shirley Temple films, many of which hold up remarkably well. But Ponette stands by itself, as you can probably tell from the other reviews here.

One film buff told me it's the first movie she's ever seen that made her cry. Now by "cry" I don't mean you'll be dabbing at your eyes with a Kleenex or two. You're going to need the whole box. Seeing it with a friend? Get a second box. It doesn't even need the element of surprise. I've only seen it once, two years ago, in a theatre. You know how at the end of a film everyone gets up, yakking about where to go for a bite to eat and whatnot? At the end of Ponette all you could hear was sniffling. Unique in my theatre-going experience. Even now I can't talk about it without tearing up.

But please don't avoid it because you're afraid it will make you too sad. Ponette may break your heart but you'll be a better person for it, and you'll thank Doillon and Thivisol and the rest of the cast and crew and distributors for it. It's the kind of film that inspires kindness, not moroseness. Ever after, when you feel the urge to do something mean-spirited, you'll see Ponette's face and that may well change your mind. If this sounds a over the top you just haven't seen this film. The original purpose of art was to inspire people to live up to their society's ideals, and do it in an entertaining, compelling way. This does that in spades. I've read some reviews that called it slow moving, pointless etc. I feel sorry for those reviewers. You will too.

I'm also writing Fox/Lorber to beg them to reissue this on DVD in letterbox. I can't believe they'd think the kind of people who'd buy a DVD of Ponette are the sort of yahoos who'd want a third of the image cut away.

--Lee Thé

This is quite an amazing film; the lead actress is Victoire Thivosol ("Chocolat"--Anouk) who gives an award-winning performance at the tender age of 4 years old. She plays Ponette, the young daughter of a woman killed in an auto accident. Her father, unable to deal well with the loss himself, leaves Ponette at an aunt's and ultimately at a children's school. During the school days and the weekends with her cousins, Ponette deals with the horrendous loss. She seeks her own form of belief, and is bumped around by all the other children, who good-naturedly or not try to share their own beliefs and magic gestures to make sense of the world.

The ending doesn't please everyone but I liked it, especially for the cameo role played by Marie Trintignant. The camera angle is interesting throughout--tight and close and at child-level. We see the world up close and at Ponette's viewpoint, adding to the feeling of being overwhelmed and buffeted by life.

This film is well-deserving of the many awards it received and Victoire Thivisol is nothing short of amazing. Definitely see this one.

It's hard to find the words to express how this film made me feel (surprisingly I found myself crying just 4 minutes into the movie); but I must declare that it has certainly moved me deeply. I have seen few movies where the performances are as believable as this one. The storyline is simple yet beautiful. The cinematography is perfectly carried out from light tones into the colours of fall/winter. And the ending (while not "loved" by all viewers) is moving and brings a lot of hope to anyone who has ever experience a heartache (or life for that matter). I happened to see "Ponette" at a time when I nearly lost my mom to an illness and it made me realise the importance of keeping the faith and maintaining my heart open . This film has quickly made it into my list of top flicks. I recommend it to all people, even if you are not into "sad" films (I for one was not before this one), You are gonna love the movie and you'll ADORE little Victorie Thivisol. Thank You Amy for recommending me this film.

I have agonized and agonized again over how to start a review of the French film "Ponette." Perhaps my difficulty stems from attempting to describe a film that falls outside my usual cinematic experiences. After all, a steady diet of slasher movies, out and out gorefests, and films dealing with the supernatural tend to erect certain barriers that can be daunting to circumnavigate. One should simply not look at "Ponette" in the same way one views "Friday the 13th" or "Dead Alive," and any attempt to do so does a grave disservice to this magnificent experience. And it is an experience, a film unlike any I have ever seen in my long career of cinema watching. I can't even remember now how I came to see this movie, whether I saw a review somewhere and thought it worth watching or whether a friend recommended the movie to me with the hope that I would abandon the world of cheap and cheesy horror flicks. Well, I haven't given up watching bad movies; I don't think anything could make me give up my nasty little hobby, not even a film as sublime as "Ponette." But this movie certainly gave me a different perspective, that's for sure.

When we first meet the adorable four year old Ponette (Victoire Thivisol), we quickly learn she has gone through a rough patch. She's in a car with her father, arm in a sling, heading out to her aunt's house for an indefinite stay. The conversation between Ponette her dad (Xavier Beauvois) is terse and upsetting: the girl's mother (Marie Trintignant) had an automobile accident with her daughter in the car. While Ponette escaped serious injury--aside from the broken arm--the prognosis for mom doesn't look so good. The accident is far more serious than we initially thought, so serious in fact that our young heroine soon learns her mother has died from her injuries. But what does death mean to a four year old girl? How does a child with absolutely no experience of the wider world cope with the loss of a parent? These are the questions director Jacques Doillon tries to answer in this film. Ponette cannot rely on her grief stricken father, whose devastation is so total that he leaves his daughter with relatives and flees. Her aunt and the adults at school cannot do much to help, either. Instead, Ponette must rely on the assistance of her two cousins, Matiaz (Matiaz Bureau Caton) and Delphine (Delphine Schiltz), and several kids at school to help her through her grief.

What is amazing about "Ponette" is the performance of little Victoire Thivisol as the distraught child. This is not a case of an older, cynical child playing a younger youth. Thivisol really is roughly four years old in the movie. A question for the ages is how Jacques Doillon managed to get this sort of performance out of a kid. How do you explain a complex sensation like the loss of a parent to a child who has never experienced such pain? Moreover, how do you do this and then get them to mirror it back for the camera? Beats me, but Thivisol somehow manages to convince the viewer that she's going through one of life's worst experiences. I think you'd have to go back to Tatum O'Neal to find an actress with similar abilities. Most child actors simply can't emote the way Thivisol does in this film. We're too familiar with kids in pictures who laugh, act up, or mug for the camera. There is no mugging here unless you count the shenanigans we see from some of the other kids in the film. The emotions seem real, natural and deeply disturbing as only reality can make them. The only way Thivisol's performance won't affect you is if you absolutely despise children.

After marveling at the profound range shown by Thivisol, I couldn't help but notice how the movie deals with loss and how human beings cope with such an emotion. The movie shows us scene after scene of Ponette seeking some truth that will explain what happened to her beloved mother and how she can bring her back to life. She goes to a young Jewish girl in her class, Ada (Leopoldine Serre), for help because someone told her Jews are closer to God. Aside from teaching Ponette how to talk to God--which involves serious tests on the playground that will likely make you smile--Ada's information doesn't really help. Information gleaned from adults about Christianity and its notions of the afterlife also provides Ponette with little in the way of concrete answers. Our heroine tries everything she knows, what she thinks of on her own and what others tell her, but nothing brings her mother back. Sadly, the movie sort of cops out at the end, but the journey to the conclusion is far more compelling. What the viewer quickly learns is that the questions asked by Ponette are questions adults ask in the same circumstances. We also question God's motivations and wish beyond hope that anything we do will bring our loved one back to life. There is almost no difference between what Ponette does and what adults do in similar situations.

A final element of the film that really moved me concerned the claustrophobic atmosphere of the set pieces. Director Doillon really gives us a sense that we're in a young girl's world through the use of close-ups, lots of interior shots, and the general inaccessibility to adults. Think back to your own childhood, when your world seemed so large but was really constricted to your home and neighborhood. That's the sense we get from "Ponette," that she inhabits a very small world made up of only a few other people and a few surroundings. Anyway, enough of that. You've got to watch "Ponette" if you get the chance. You'll never see anything quite like it, I assure you.

A straightforward look at death and grief through the eyes of a small child, Ponette isn't about false sentiment. It is about how children see the world, and how they cannot understand the finality of death. This rings especially true in Ponette's interactions with other children, her peers. They cannot understand her loss, and their lack of sympathy is unforced and very natural. The adults try to help but are so far removed from her and unable to remember themselves as children that they cannot understand her grief and denial.

But more then just about the inner life of a child and her grief it is about how we all deal with losses that no one but we ourselves can understand. About the platitudes we are fed by people who've not made their own peace with mortality. About those who turn away because they fear thoughts of death.

And in the end, just as in Ponette; peace and understanding, when they come, are unique to the individual alone and not given in some fireworks filled denoument but in the slightest whisper.


Victoire Thivisol is simply brilliant. Jacques Doillon is a master of his craft.

One of the guys who works at a local video store that I frequent, when I asked about this film, said `It's probably the saddest film ever made.' Whoa. That's a pretty strong statement, and it further tweaked my curiosity. When I finally got around to watching it, I could see where he was coming from - but there's a lot more to this fine piece of filmmaking than that. This is definitely one of the most moving films I've ever seen - and the performance by 4 year-old actress Victoire Thivisol (who portrayed Anouk in CHOCOLAT so well, `later in her career') is absolutely stunning. I saw the blurb on the cover touting her `best actress' award at the Vienna Film Festival for her work in PONETTE - it's easy to see why.

Written and directed by Jacques Doillon, PONETTE tells the story of a very young girl coming to terms with grief and death - hard enough for anyone, but her first experience centers on the death of her mother in a car accident. Ponette was in the car as well - she wears a cast on her left arm for the entire film - so she has that trauma to deal with also. Her father isn't around much - he leaves her in the care of her aunt Claire - and when he's with Ponette, he seems to have difficulty exercising empathy and understanding with her, which could easily be due to his own grief over the death of his wife.

With the help of her cousins, her aunt, a few understanding schoolmates, a very sensitive and kind teacher, and the strength of her own spirit, Ponette makes the journey to healing. Getting conflicting advice on death and religion from several quarters, she searches for the path that resonates with truth within her. The performance Victoire Thivisol turns in here will astound you - I can't recall ever seeing a child this young in a role so demanding do such a fine job.

The ending - to which some reviewers have taken exception - worked into the film nicely, I thought. Much of an individual's objection to it (and I won't spoil it) has to do with his or her own beliefs and feelings - but I thought it fit the story here very well.

A minor note -- the information on this product page is a little confusing. It says 'color/widescreen/Dolby', and then in the 'further details' page says 'full-screen' under 'features'. The film is in full-screen format on the DVD -- but this certainly doesn't detract from the enjoyment of it.

All in all - I can recommend this film VERY highly, but as another reviewer wisely advised, have a box of tissues handy.

Four-year-old Victoire Thivisol--who looks as if she could have been the model for Renoir's "Girl With a Watering Can"--gave such a moving, luminous, unaffected performance in the 1996 film "Ponette" that some critics accused writer-drector Jacques Doillon of child abuse. Certainly it's agonizing to watch Thivisol's tearful spasms of grief as the eponymous Ponette, a French nursery-school girl whose mother is killed in a car accident. But Thivisol's performance goes beyond realistic crying; the quiet expression on her face as she visits a chapel, trying to make direct contact with Jesus, would do credit to any adult actress. It's difficult to think of any child actor--with the possible exception of Jackie Coogan in "The Kid," a full three-quarters of a century before--giving such a masterful performance at such an extremely tender age. Even Mary Badham in "To Kill a Mockingbird"--as good as she was, and as young as she was--didn't quite achieve the miraculous excellence that Thivisol does. (Haley Joel Osment in "The Sixth Sense" and Tina Majorino in "When a Man Loves a Woman" were as brilliant as Thivisol, but they were also considerably older.) In his screenplay, Doillon demonstrates almost preternatural insight into "Kidworld"--how children interact with each other, and how they try, with limited experience of the world and contradictory advice from adults, to make sense of life's mysteries and tragedies. And while Ponette's father (Xavier Beauvois) comes across as a jerk, unfortunately it's easy to believe that he--angry, grieving, no longer believing that life has any point--would behave so rudely to his tiny daughter. The film's ending, depending on your viewpoint, is either mawkishly unrealistic or heartrending and deeply satisfying (I take the latter view). "Ponette" is an unforgettable film with an unforgettable lead performance.

Don't watch this movie if you have plans to do something afterwards. I have never been moved so deeply by a movie. Thivisol (Ponette) should get a lifetime achievement award for this one role. If you don't like crying in front of other people, watch it ALONE. The director somehow manages to take the viewer into the psycholigical kingdom of a beautiful and very sad little woman. By the end of the movie it became too much to handle and I found myself crying....shaking....crying like a four year old thinking my mother was taken from me forever and the haunting prospects of moving through life without Her. My shaking and crying continued for an hour after the movie ended. "Out of sight out of mind" does not apply to this film. It continues to affect me right now. This should be required viewing for the human race. Forget about the tissues and hankies...they won't keep up with the tears. As a couple of my friends say, "hold your heart with two hands."