I'm Not a F ** king Princess

Movie
German title	I'm Not a F ** king Princess
Original title	My little princess
Country of production	France ; Romania
original language	French ; English ; Romanian
Publishing year	2011
length	135 minutes
Age rating	FSK 12
Rod
Director	Eva Ionesco
script	Eva Ionesco ; Marc Cholodenko ; Philippe Le Guay
production	Les Productions Bagheera ; Canal Plus ; France 2
music	Olivier Mauvezin
camera	Jeanne Lapoirie
cut	Laurence Briaud
occupation
	Isabelle Huppert : Hanna; Anamaria Vartolomei : Violetta; Denis Lavant : Seriously; Louis-Do de Lencquesaing : Antoine; Déborah Révy : Nadia;

I'm Not a F ** king Princess (Original title: My Little Princess ) is a Franco-Romanian drama film directed by Eva Ionesco .

action

Violetta is raised by her "Mamie" ("Omi"). Her mother Hanna tries to make a living from photography and dreams of one day becoming famous as an artist. In order to make the breakthrough, she doesn't shy away from meeting men of dubious reputations. The mother only visits her daughter from time to time, but it is on one of these occasions that the idea occurs to her that her daughter is a potential model. She begins to use them as such, which results in her daughter becoming estranged from her peers. This goes so far that her classmates insult and disapprove of her. Then the grandmother dies, which means that the educational responsibility now rests solely with Hanna, who promptly begins to exceed the limits of what is acceptable when photographing her daughter. Violetta even has to strip and, although only 11 years old, take on explicit sexual poses in front of the camera. Finally, Hanna's custody of Violetta is up for debate.

background

The film is based on the director's memories of her mother, the well-known art photographer Irina Ionesco , whose photos of her child and adolescent daughter in the 1970s sparked discussions about an obvious or assumed pedophile subtext of these photographs.

The director said about the production:

“'At first nobody wanted to produce this film,' says director Ionesco. 'They thought the script was great, but they were all afraid of finding themselves in a pedophile story and repeating my personal drama on screen.' "

- Barbara Block - ARD

The film depicts a situation that at first glance seems paradoxical: while she reveals more and more of her daughter to the general public, the daughter herself seems to become increasingly stranger to the mother and vice versa. Anamaria Vartolomei and Isabelle Huppert play this lack of mutual sympathy so convincingly that critics have even assumed that they would interact inadequately as actresses.

The actress Huppert said:

“Eva Ionesco gave me no autobiographical advice, never told me about the real hardship of this relationship. She was smart enough to understand that the film would be a lot more interesting than fiction. "

- Isabelle Huppert in Vogue

criticism

The conclusion of the review in Cinefacts (see below) says that some viewers, when looking at the film, may get the impression that the director also did the filming of this story as a kind of artistic self-therapy. Isabelle Huppert explained in an interview with the FAZ that shooting the film was a strange experience for her, despite all her routine, because it made her feel like the director's mother.

"The drama of an exploitative mother-daughter relationship is at the same time an attempt by the director to cope with her childhood."

- Bianka Piringer, Cinefacts

“It's always a thing when a book or film is nourished exclusively from life that has been lived, when the autobiographical is so strong that there is nothing next to it and the fictionalization becomes marginal. A balancing act that can succeed. Author and director Eva Ionesco failed it completely "

- Thilo Wydra, Bayerischer Rundfunk

"The up-and-coming actress Anamaria Vartolomei is convincing as a young girl for whom her mother's dream of an artistic career in Paris in the 1970s turns into a nightmare"

- Editor, Focus