Cinema – the little grief

You can no longer see it: convinced single (usually male) meets a cute child, has to struggle with him alone, and the aversion becomes great love, which often goes hand in hand with a conversion to a small family. Carine Tardieu is now also using this overstracked child scheme from numerous feel-good movies, but thankfully changes it in a crucial place. Her unbounded and self -confident protagonist Sandra, who is passionate about a feminist bookstore, reluctantly explained to take care of the six -year -old boys Elliot (César Botti as a picture book nose approval) for a few hours, while the parents drive to the hospital for the delivery of his sister, but then the father returns without a woman and mother – only the baby survived the birth.

Huch! Does the film want to force a seasoned feminist, in his mid -50s, into the role of family mother?

Sandra sees the needs of the grieving residual family, is chosen and taken into account by the cozy, old -fashioned Elliot, initially hesitantly grabs the widower, then more and more under his arms, which he replies with advances – and at the latest there all alarm bells: Should a seasoned feminist, mid -50, for her independent life and forced into the family nut. become?

Although her film is not free of clichés – the director of French crowd favorites (“a Breton love”) does not make it that simple. Sandra may preserve her independence and yet a surprising connection, which is surprising for herself.

As she says, the Paris director sees itself “inevitably” as a feminist, but not as an activist. “Politics occur a bit in my films, but it is not my main concern to convey messages, but writing is a form of commitment.” Too often, it did not have to justify the traditional role model. When she decided to adopt a child at the age of 40, she learned how bond (“L’Antachement” means the film in the original) from intensive contact. In this film adaptation of Alice Farey’s novel “L’Intimité” she had the theory of British psychoanalyst John Bowlby, after which children bind to the one who takes care of them in their survival instinct. “In short: Need makes it inventive.” Precisely because Sandra does not play the replacement mom and talks to Elliot like with an adult, he sees no competition in her and chooses her as a safe harbor in a phase in which he and his father pulls the ground under his feet.

Sandra’s sister and mother act in “what connects us” as counter models and represent different female ways of life. Nevertheless, the film is banalized and romanticized both care and grief. The everyday crises look as cushioned and the children of the single widower develop very well. The film is divided into linear -progressive chapters that are overwritten with the respective age of the newborn, and remains straight and conventional. Only at the beginning the camera takes up the children’s perspective. The adults transmit important messages through closed glass doors, a residual distance remains preserved.

It is striking that Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, otherwise on nerve bundle and “hysteric”, subscribes to, of all things in the role of unconventional feminist well, masters and withdrawn. You have never seen it so much silent smile. The most daring what the script allows is the habit of smoking – even when small children are in the room.

What connects us, France 2024. Director: Carine Tardieu. With Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Pio Marmaï. 105 minutes. Cinema start: 7.8.