In life, death always has the last word. But not at the cinema.
This is the premise of La Petite, the new film by Guillaume Nicloux, adapted from the novel Le Berceau by Fanny Chesnel. She also wrote the screenplay with the director of The Nun, The Tower and The Kidnapping by Michel Houellebecq.
The filmmaker has created a human and hopeful film which, while not overwhelming us, comforts us. Without reinventing the wheel, Nicloux films with conviction the rebirth of a taciturn sixty-year-old whose life has been marked by several ordeals.
Recently widowed, Joseph (Fabrice Luchini) learns that his son died in a plane accident with his partner. He has difficulty coping with the mourning of this son whom he did not truly know. In shock, the sixty-year-old wants to have news of the future baby that the couple had planned to have with the help of Rita, a young surrogate mother.
What will become of the child? Is he the legitimate grandfather? Driven by his desire to extend the bond with his missing son, Joseph leaves Bordeaux in search of this woman in Belgium. A journey that will change him profoundly.
If the film is not perfect (the plot is predictable, the characters are poorly defined and the dramatic arc is imposed on us by the caring message), the theme of filiation is treated very well. Through the project of a homosexual couple using surrogacy (surrogacy) to create a family, La Petite also does useful work by approaching same-sex parenthood without prejudice.
Despite implausibilities in the scenario (the unknown grandfather who becomes an accomplice of the staff in the delivery room; Joseph’s complicity with Rita’s daughter), we let ourselves be carried away by this tender and luminous, tragic and comic story. And we never tire of seeing Luchini play in the cinema. Especially in a counter-employment role. Amorphous, depressive, solitary, Joseph is very far from the overexcited characters of the actor in Nights of the Full Moon and Alceste on a Bicycle.
At her side, Mara Taquin (Rien à foutre) is wonderfully natural and carefree as Rita, the wild and fierce young surrogate mother. The meeting of these two solitudes, although predictable, sums up this film which takes a new look at the family. By illustrating that the family we choose is sometimes more natural than the real one…
