Petite Solange

A thirteen-year-old girl is told to read out “Je suis venu, calme orphelin”, a poem by Paul Verlaine, and she freezes in front of her class. Every melodrama tells the secret that is hidden behind deep despair, and PETITE SOLANGE tells this particular one. Solange is said to be full of life, but she is not lively. It’s just that life is too full, and it overwhelms her. The event behind her story is no small one: she is witnessing the end of love. Not any love, but the one that made her, as her parents are drifting apart. Her identity deeply scarred, Solange is both like Antoine Doinel’s little sister, lost in the voluntary and involuntary cruelties of adults, and like a daughter to Ingrid Bergman’s character in VIAGGIO IN ITALIA, akin to the remains of two lovers caught by a volcano explosion in Pompei, a distant trauma at once alien and her own. The key components of this heartbreaking film are music and the changing face of a human being, one who is going through a moment diminished by adults for being temporary (adolescence), but is anything truly lasting? She will learn, and what she has learned she will finally teach, touching everyone around her. (Lucía Salas)

Axelle Ropert: ÉTOILE VIOLETTE (2005), LA FAMILLE WOLBERG (2009), TIREZ LA LANGUE, MADEMOISELLE (2013), TRUFFAUT AU PRÉSENT: COUPLES (2014, TV, K), LA PRUNELLE DE MES YEUX (2016)