This accomplished French film directed by Claude Miller (The Accompanist) is billed as a modern day retelling of Anton Chekov's classic play The Seagull. Only in this version, the setting is a country house in France and the characters' interest in theatre has been switched to movies. This exquisite production is top-drawer in every department from the ensemble performances to the lovely rural setting to the delightful and surprising finale. Here is a film to savor again and again especially the small details that say so much about the web of romantic intrigue and family conflict at the core of the story.
Welcome to the summer house of Mado (Nicole Garcia), a successful middle-aged actress who has just completed a movie with Brice (Bernard Giraudeau), the director who is also her lover. Her 70-year-old brother Simon (Jean-Pierre Marielle) seems uncomfortable in the place but handles this problem by sleeping as much as he can. The handyman's (Marc Betton) wife (Anne Le Ny) is carrying on an affair with the local doctor (Yves Jacques). And their daughter Jeanne-Marie (Julie Depardieu) secretly adores Julien (Robinson Stevenin), Mado's son who is an experimental filmmaker. He has just finished a short film starring his sexy girlfriend Lili (Ludivine Sagnier). When he screens it for the family and others, his mother Mado harshly criticizes it, and this sets off a series of subtle shifts in the complicated relationships in the country house.
The catalyst for everything that happens is Lili, a seductive young woman who wants to be an actress. She quickly realizes that her best ticket into a successful career lies with Brice and not Julien. Sagnier carries the film with her youthful eroticism and in the final segment of the drama, which swings five years into the future, she again gets her way when Julien allows her to star in a film that he is directing. They have not been in touch since she had an affair with Brice. Equally surprising, this young man has cast his mother in the film as herself. La Petit Lili ends as it began with a group of people making the most of their time together in the sun.
