Little Tickles

When Odette, a dancer, was a child, a close friend of the family sexually abused her repeatedly and nobody noticed. The film watches her as an adult, in front of a therapist and on stage, with the past cutting in the way memory does. It is not interested in punishing the abuser. It is interested in the complicity around him: the mother above all chooses not to hear what her daughter is telling her, and the film's hardest conflict sits there. The adults who insist on not seeing are placed in front of us alongside the man himself. The form uses dance as a direct narrative instrument. Odette says with movement what she cannot say in words, and the cuts between therapy and choreography are abrupt. The source is the director's own life. Andréa Bescond first wrote and performed the story as a one-woman play; she co-directed the film adaptation with Eric Métayer and plays the lead. It screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2018 and won two prizes at the 2019 Césars: Best Supporting Actress for Karin Viard and the award for adaptation of a stage play for the two directors. Who it is for: viewers who value films that look directly at difficult subjects and take formal risks. Who it is not for: anyone who would be harmed by scenes of abuse being shown. The film keeps them brief but does not avoid them.