After the death of her mother in a car accident, Ponette indulges in grief. She resolutely wanted to see her mother again and talk to her. She tried various methods to communicate with her mother. Pray in the night, call in the wilderness, go to the cemetery. She spent all day waiting. The children and adults around her sometimes comforted her, sometimes destroyed her hopes; and she always had childlike and eccentric ways of summoning her mother in her dealings with others. Of course, we can doubt, how could such a little girl who is not even walking steadily have such strong perseverance? Is it because of love, or because of character? "No One Less" also tells about a girl with extraordinary perseverance.
I think it's best to believe that there are people in this world with strong willpower, even a little girl. Later, the little girl's mother was arranged to actually show up, comfort her, and make her a happy child; this surprised me a bit, not that the surreal plot shouldn't be there, but that it was too easy. We know that the bell has to be tied, and to untie the girl's heart, her mother is of course the best person. But the original problem in the movie is that her mother is dead, so how to unravel the girl's knot is what I cared about from the beginning, and I was thinking about how to solve this problem, and the answer is this, which is a bit tricky. Although the presence of her mother can be explained as a vision of the girl herself, visions cannot go beyond personal limitations; the little girl cannot imagine what her mother said to her unless she has figured out what her mother said to her early on.
Maybe I'm overthinking. After all, this is a story about a child. It's a bit more dreamy and simple, and it's probably understandable. And the movie was well done. The children around the protagonist are cute and real. It's rare to talk about death and still be interesting, not at all sensational. Thoughts about religion, death, and survival flicker in the film, not too dazzling but with an aftertaste. That's enough.
If you throw the question to me, well, let me think, how do I get such a stubborn girl out of her shadow?
June 11, 2000
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