Petite Maman (2021) — Eight-year-old Nelly goes with her parents to clean out her recently deceased grandmother's house. While playing in the woods by the house, she meets Marion, a girl her own age. Marion has the same name as Nelly's mother, she's building a hut in the woods where Nelly's mother once did, and her house looks just like Nelly's grandmother's.... It's an odd little film, but sweet and compelling.
I learned just this morning that the theater where I saw it,
Landmark's Shattuck Cinemas in Downtown Berkeley, is closing. I've been going there since the '80s, and I've seen all sorts of stuff there, from Hollywood blockbusters to foreign-language indie films with only two or three people in the audience. Since the Shattuck reopened after the lockdown, I've gone there to see
Raya and the Last Dragon; Minari; Godzilla vs. Kong; Oscar Nominated Short Films 2021: Animation; Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street; Cliff Walkers (Xuan ya zhi shang); The Sparks Brothers; Werewolves Within; Annette; CODA; The Nowhere Inn; Wife of a Spy (Supai no tsuma); The Velvet Underground; Lamb (Dýrið); The French Dispatch; Last Night in Soho; Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Gūzen to sōzō); Drive My Car; The Tragedy of Macbeth; Belle (Ryū to sobakasu no hime); Studio 666; The Batman; Oscar Nominated Short Films 2021: Animation; Alice; and
Everything Everywhere All at Once. I think I'll go see
Everything Everywhere All at Once again on $7 Tuesday, at what appears to be the Shattuck's final screening. Maybe I'll be transported to a universe that doesn't suck huge donkey dongs like this one.