Latest news with #LaPetiteDernière
Time Out
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
The Little Sister
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.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Little Sister' Scores 12-Minute Ovation At Cannes Premiere
The Little Sister drew big applause at the Cannes Film Festival. The audience gave writer-director Hafsia Herzi's coming-out pic an energetic 12-minute ovation after its world premiere Friday at the Palais. There were lots of whoops and shouts from the crowd before Herzi's post-screening thank-you speech as people showed their enthusiasm for the French director's third feature aka La Petite Dernière. More from Deadline 'The Little Sister' Review: Nadia Melliti Makes A Striking Debut In Hafsia Herzi's Seductive Coming-Out Story – Cannes Film Festival Cannes Film Festival 2025: Read All Of Deadline's Movie Reviews Studio TF1 CEO Pierre Branco Talks Cinema Push, Hire Of Ex-Sky Original Film Director & Appointment Of French Distribution Head The film starring Nadia Melliti is adapted from Fatima Daas's semi-autobiographical 2022 novel The Last One, the story of a young gay Muslim woman's sexual awakening. In his Deadline review, Damon Wise wrote, 'Herzi confidently takes what could have been a traditional coming-out tale and turns it into something altogether more defiant, a character study that takes place in the no-man's-land between the oppressive certainties of childhood and the intoxicating freedoms of early adulthood.' RELATED: Here's the logline: Fatima, 17, is the youngest. She lives in the suburbs with her sisters, in a happy and loving family. A good student, she joins a philosophy school in Paris and discovers a whole new world. As she begins her life as a young woman, she emancipates herself from her family and its traditions. Fatima then begins to question her identity. How can she reconcile her faith with her budding desires? Park Ji-min, Amina Ben Mohamed, Rita Benmannana, Melissa Guers also star in The Little Sister, which MK2 Films is shopping on the Riviera. Best of Deadline Everything We Know About Paramount's 'Regretting You' Adaptation So Far 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery Where To Watch All The 'Mission: Impossible' Movies: Streamers With Multiple Films In The Franchise
