Mimi: Childhood Tested by Unease


Lucile Hadžihalilović's first significant medium-length film, Mimi (1996), stands out as a discreet but profoundly disturbing work of 1990s French cinema. Presented at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section, the film immediately reveals a filmmaker attentive to the shadowy areas of intimacy and the fragmentary perceptions of childhood.

The narrative is deliberately minimalist. Mimi, a taciturn little girl, is entrusted to her aunt after her mother's suicide attempt. In the cramped apartment of an anonymous suburb, the presence of Jean-Pierre, the aunt's partner, acts as a disruptive element. Nothing is explicitly stated, but everything is conveyed through bodies, silences, and glances. The anxiety spreads slowly, almost imperceptibly, until it pervades the film.

Lucile Hadžihalilović adopts the child's sensory perspective, rejecting any explanatory psychology. The camera remains at Mimi's eye level, lingering on details—a mouth, a nighttime noise, an innocuous gesture—which take on a disturbing dimension. This economy of dialogue and minimalist staging contribute to a constant atmosphere of unease, where the viewer is invited to feel rather than understand.


The film directly confronts the vulnerability of childhood in the face of the adult world, without ever resorting to spectacle or didacticism. It is precisely this restraint that makes the work unsettling: Mimi suggests more than it shows, allowing weighty themes to surface—fear, trauma, the impossibility of speaking out.

Already, we find in it the motifs that will run through the director's later filmography (Innocence, Evolution): enclosed spaces, silent female characters, a pervasive violence embedded in everyday life. As such, the film appears as a seminal work, heralding a sensory and radical cinema, bordering on the dark fairy tale and social realism.

Little known to the general public, Mimi remains an important piece of French auteur cinema, whose strength lies in its ability to create unease where, on the surface, almost nothing happens.


TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS


Title: Mimi
Director: Lucile Hadžihalilović
Screenplay: Lucile Hadžihalilović
Production Year: 1996
Release Year: 1997
Country: France
Running Time: 52 minutes
Format: 35 mm
Color: Color
Sound: Mono
Original Language: French
Genre: Drama
Type: Medium-length film

Image / Director of Photography: Dominique Colin
Editing: Lucile Hadžihalilović
Music:
– Loïc Da Silva
– Philippe Mallier
– John Milko
– François Roy

Production: Les Cinémas de la Zone
Distribution: Argos Films (distribution)

Interpretation

  • Mimi: Sandra Sammartino
  • Solange: Denise Aron-Schropfer
  • Jean-Pierre: Michel Trillot

Selections and awards

  • Cannes Film Festival 1996 – Un Certain Regard Selection