Lit­tle Ones – first-look review

Six­teen year old Julie (Pili Groyne) is san­guine about the prospect of giv­ing up her baby for adop­tion in six months time, hav­ing tried twice (with the assis­tance of her par­ty-lov­ing moth­er) to med­ical­ly abort the unwant­ed preg­nan­cy giv­en to her by wet-behind-the-ears, BMX-rid­ing boyf, Sal­im (Bilel Chegrani). The French legal sys­tem, how­ev­er, has oth­er ideas, instead plac­ing Julie in a closed mater­ni­ty unit with num­ber of oth­er moth­ers – some strug­gling with young chil­dren, oth­ers expect­ing imminently.

Julie Lerat-Gersant’s effec­tive and affect­ing tear­jerk­er hones in on the myr­i­ad and unpre­dictable respon­si­bil­i­ties of moth­er­hood (and pre-moth­er­hood), and is unsen­ti­men­tal in its view of the domes­tic and emo­tion­al real­i­ties of young par­ents who have been placed in a sit­u­a­tion they nev­er want­ed to be in.

The chaot­ic Alli­son (Lucie Charles-Alfred) being a case in point, who oscil­lates between smoth­er­ing her asth­mat­ic tot Diana in love, and need­ing to expe­ri­ence the euphor­ic highs of youth that she’s in con­stant fear of miss­ing out on. A sequence detail­ing an all-night club­bing expe­di­tion – includ­ing a live­ly al fres­co bop in the pour­ing rain – is capped with a haunt­ing hard cut to baby Diana alone in the flat weep­ing and cough­ing, call­ing out des­per­ate­ly for her errant mother.

Julie, though, is the main pro­tag­o­nist here, as she mil­i­tant­ly retains her desire to give up the baby at point of birth, know­ing that she won’t be able to sup­ply it with the life and love it deserves. Lerat-Gersant’s film is unsen­ti­men­tal in how it presents the con­text sur­round­ing that com­plex moral quandary, and also how the sit­u­a­tion she’s in could well influ­ence a change in heart. Its focus on state repro­duc­tive pro­vi­sions, and how they bare­ly cov­er the range of needs required by this woman, lends the film its sub­tle polit­i­cal edge.

Despite a super­fi­cial­ly close rela­tion­ship, Julie’s hap­haz­ard moth­er (Suzanne Roy-Ler­at) sees her own strug­gle with child-rear­ing in her sim­i­lar­ly spiky and out­spo­ken daugh­ter. On the oth­er side is social worked Nadine (Romane Bohringer) who des­per­ate­ly wants Julie to con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty of becom­ing a moth­er, and not mere­ly give up the baby as some sym­bol­ic ges­ture or punk­ish V‑sign towards a soci­ety that has let her down.

It’s a con­ven­tion­al­ly put-togeth­er film, unfuss­i­ly shot and edit­ed, and with a classy soap-opera feel the the pro­ceed­ings. Yet Groyne’s spir­it­ed and enig­mat­ic lead per­for­mance car­ries things through, her ever-com­bustible arc and the tumult of her pri­vate life always threat­en­ing to send mat­ters tee­ter­ing over the edge.

The fact that she smokes heav­i­ly and rollerblades con­stant­ly through the lat­ter stages of her preg­nan­cy adds to the ten­sion of her well­be­ing while lac­ing the pro­ceed­ings the a trag­ic hon­esty about young peo­ple not real­ly being able to com­pre­hend the grav­i­ty and pre­car­i­ous­ness of new life at that young age. The feel nat­u­ral­ly drifts towards its will she/won’t she finale, and thank­ful­ly man­ages to stick its high­ly sat­is­fy­ing landing.