This French queer coming-of-age story, adapted from a novel by Fatima Daas, is intriguing from start to finish in how it depicts one teenage woman navigating conflicting worlds of family, religion, school, sex and love.
Such stories of awakening are frequent on film, yet The Little Sister (aka La Petite Dernière) is unusual in that Fatima (Nadia Melliti), who we first meet praying alone, is a French-Algerian Muslim from the rougher side of Paris. Her high-school world is one of homophobic bullying and banter, and her home life, where she’s the youngest of three girls, is one where there’s a quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) assumption that she’ll follow her parents by marrying, starting a family and looking after a husband and kids.
Put simply: that’s simply not happening. But that’s easier said than done, and this entire film, told over four seasons as Fatima finishes school and starts university, depicts the pull of conformity and the hard push of change and adaptation. Fatima’s awakening of her sexual identity is the main focus: as her school career is coming to an end, she hits the apps; she meets women at first almost like a journalist on assignment, quizzing one amused older women on the exact details of lesbian sex; she starts to fall in love with Ji-Na (Park Ji-Min), a French-Korean medic who she meets at a workshop for her asthma, although Ji-Na’s mental health challenges get in the way.
Sex is a new frontier, but so are words
Sex is a new frontier, but so too are words: Fatima is quiet, reticent, passive, and we watch her discover a new language of passion and connection. It’s interesting that her first possibly sexual encounter is entirely a conversation; the first actual sex scene in the film avoids the sex entirely.
As a storyteller, writer-director Hafsia Herzi is not coy, but she’s careful, allowing intimacy to emerge with the same tentativeness as it does for Fatima. In that demanding lead role, often playing opposite non-professional actors, Melliti is excellent as Fatima, at once vulnerable and aggressive, and especially powerful in moments of silence and reflection as one part of her world changes around her so quickly while another remains, perhaps forever, firmly rooted in tradition.
It’s not the sort of film about liberation that has you punching the air or swelling regularly with deep feelings, but it’s so often beautifully observed and told with great care and compassion, and it’s as much as tackling new frontiers of culture and class as it is about finding the right people with whom to share your body and your love.
The Little Sister premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.