Little Girl Blue

Director Mona Achache browses through the many carton boxes her late mother Carole left behind. She dreams of bringing her mother's image back to life and tries to trace and comprehend the forces that pushed her mother to take her own life. Mona seeks the help of actress Marion Cotillard to try and adopt her mother's character. Through this metamorphosis, we are exposed to the family history: her grandmother, Monique Lange, was an esteemed editor and writer. Her mother Carole grew up in the bohemia, was a victim of exploitation, and returned from the bottom of existence to an unsatisfactory bourgeois life. We have seen quite a few films that deal with questions of oppression and exploitation. Here, thanks to the clever cinematic approach and walking on the seam between narrative and documentary, something innovative forms: a "tender, painful, intimate" (Hollywood Reporter), and elaborate family and social portrait that explores how trauma reproduces itself generation after generation.