Ponette (1996)
It would be an understatement that this was a tough watch when you have your own kid around Ponette’s age, who even sort of looks a bit like her. There are some incredibly touching scenes with that little girl, and it is unfathomable how they got a 4 year old to act like that. It was also a bit manipulative at times though, where I felt they pushed too hard to provoke some outburst of emotion that wasn’t strictly needed. The crowning achievement of this film is how everything is told from the girls point of view. It is her limited understanding of the world we see, making the film not strictly following a normal dramatic structure for a story. Day to day events just flows together in a stream of consciousness type of manner in scenes that don’t really go anywhere, which of course reflects how young children experience things. Children in films very rarely work that well, so that this where it is just children on screen for more than 90% of the runtime and it works so convincingly is a great achievement in itself.
Rating: 4