My Little Princess is a French-Romanian drama film directed by Eva Ionesco

Eva Ionesco

Eva Ionesco is a French actress and film director, born in Paris. She is the daughter of Romanian-French photographer Irina Ionesco....

 and inspired by her relationship with her mother, the well-known artistic photographer Irina Ionesco

Irina Ionesco

Irina Ionesco is a French photographer born in Paris, France. She was the daughter of Romanian immigrants. She spent her childhood years in Constanţa, Romania before she moved to Paris. She traveled and painted for several years before discovering photography...

 whose pictures of her young daughter aroused discussions when they were published back in the 1970s

1970s

File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...

. The movie illustrates a situation which a first glimpse seems to be a paradox: Whilst revealing more and more of her daughter to the public the mother seems to get increasingly estranged from her and vice versa. Anamaria Vartolomei and Isabelle Huppert show this lack of affection so convincingly they have even been accused of interacting insufficiently as actors. However, Isabelle Huppert told German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , short F.A.Z., also known as the FAZ, is a national German newspaper, founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt am Main. The Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung .F.A.Z...

 in an interview the shooting of this film had been one of her more peculiar professional experiences because on the set she had had the feeling she was indeed the director's mother.

Plot

Violetta is raised by her grandmother. („Mamie“, the French equivalent for „Grandma“.) Her mother Hanna tries to make a living on making photographs and concentrates on her dreams to become a famous artist. In order to succeed as an artist she doesn't worry about dating men of questionable reputation. Only every now and then her mother visits her daughter but during these occasions it occurs to her that her daughter could be a potential model. She starts exploiting her daughter who by transforming into a kind of Lolita becomes increasingly alienated from other children of her age. At school she is eventually frequently insulted and rejected. Then Mamie dies and Hannah's photographs are about to unequivocally overstep the line of acceptability. Hanna even coerces Violetta mercilessly into cooperation by withholding her food in case she doesn't agree to pose for increasingly daring photographs. Eventually Hanna's right of custody for her twelve years old daughter is at stake.

Reception

German magazine Focus

Focus (German magazine)

Focus is a German weekly news magazine published in Munich and distributed throughout Germany. It is the third-largest weekly news magazine in Germany. It is considered conservative and leaned towards economic liberalism.- Overview :...

found Anamaria Vartolomei was convincing as a young girl whose life eventually turns into a nightmare because of her mother's artistic ambitions in the Paries of the 1970s.