Little Tickles Review

Film Block:

Writer: Andrea Bescond

Director: Andrea Bescond

Executive Producers: Francis Kraus, Denis Pineau-Valencienne

Cast: Andrea Bescond, Karin Viard, Clovis Cornillac, Pierre Deladonchamps, Grégory Montel, Carole Franck, Gringe, Ariane Ascaride, Cyrille Mairesse, Leonie Simaga


Little Tickles opens with a long take of the main character, Odette (played by Andrea Bescond) dancing in an all-black landscape. Her routine is well-danced, but jerky and rough, as if she is in pain or being tortured. These dances occur a few other times throughout the film, and are a manifestation of Odette’s conscience. They show the audience what’s going on inside Odette’s mind as her present-day self (who is in her thirties) recounts the terrors of her childhood to her therapist. Throughout the film, she walks through memories, dances, and fantasies as she tries to cope with the fact that she was raped and sexually abused by one of her father’s best friends for her entire childhood.

Odette has never spoken to anyone about this abuse until she tells her therapist. When the film begins, it has been about twenty years since her father’s friend -- Gilbert -- stopped raping her (what he called “little tickles”). The movie takes the audience through the story of Odette’s childhood and the sexual abuse that she endured, as well as her adult life, in which she’s a dancer living in Paris who takes odd jobs here and there, and also has a bit of a drug problem. Odette has a good bit of character development as an adult when she learns to deal with what happened to her as a child. She leans on her boyfriend, her best friend, and her father to support her when she eventually takes Gilbert to court near the end of the film. The end of the film is emotional but fulfilling, and leaves the audience with a feeling of peace.

This film is a well-rounded amalgamation of Odette’s experiences that make the viewers laugh, cry, and gasp at different points throughout the movie. While Bescond’s performance as Odette was the shining aspect of the film, the directing, pacing, and cinematography were also notable. One of the most intriguing aspects of the film was the way in which Odette and her therapist traverse through Odette’s memories. Instead of using the traditional flashback format of using hard cuts to navigate between past and present, Odette and her therapist literally walk through her memories. For example, in one scene, past-Odette walks into her childhood home with Gilbert and the door closes behind them, and then the camera pans slightly left to show the therapist’s desk sitting right in the front yard. Present-Odette and the therapist are sitting watching the house as if they truly are inside the memory. This technique overlaps the past and present and illustrates just how real all of it still is to present-Odette. By placing her literally inside the memories, the filmmakers show how Odette is vividly reliving the horrors of her childhood in full color. They are not blurry, black and white, or vignette -- they are clear, present, and real.

While this technique helps the readers understand Odette’s perception of her memories, it also allows for plenty of comedic moments. At times, Odette will alter her memories a bit, which the audience does not realize until the memory is over and she admits to her therapist that parts of it were false. Odette’s rambunctious and witty personality makes the audience chuckle when she shows them the ideal reality she would have preferred, or when she banters with her therapist about her past. This adds a lot of depth to the film and allows the audience to get to know Odette’s character very well, and to truly understand her past, as well as her hopes and desires. It also makes the film very interesting to watch, because it keeps the audience on their toes, since they have to pay attention to be able to discern between real, fake, past, present. This movie could have easily been a boring story that drearily switched back and forth between different stages of Odette’s life, but the way the director and screenwriter interwove both parts of the story turned it into a lively, colorful, and funny narrative that was engaging and moving all at the same time.

While the movie was hard to watch at times because of the heavy subject matter, the filmmakers incorporated humor, romance, sadness, and joy to create a balanced film that took viewers along for an emotional ride that was just bumpy enough to make them feel as if they’d watched something real. It’s a film that’s definitely worth a watch for anyone looking for a well-rounded drama complete with tears and laughter.