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(Available to stream in France and parts of Europe)
"Sunflower Girl is a live-action short film about a 13-year-old girl named Kuei. Of Chinese descent and born in the United States, Kuei lives in a New York neighborhood with her younger sister Abigail and her mother, who runs a dry cleaners.
After a prologue that sets the scene for the young teenager's relationship with her mother, the story opens with a sequence that invites us to discover Kuei's feelings, impressions, and memories in an off-camera setting. In this aside, which gives access to the character's inner self, Kuei shares the memory she has of a saying she learned when she was little at school: "Your family is your strength as well as your weakness." These words open the film with a universal reflection as they foreshadow the story to come. In a modest speech, the young girl implicitly evokes her "difference" and the experience of growing up in a country other than the one her family comes from. This same phrase also evokes the little sister Kuei must take care of, even though all she wants is to skateboard and get closer to Skylar, a boy who also skates.
Torn between her romantic desire, the burst of freedom her four-wheeled skateboard offers her, and her duty as a big sister, Kuei's character wanders the streets of New York one summer day. The director gets as close as possible to her young actress's face to allow us to read what's going through her. We are moved by her emotions, her mixture of reserve and aplomb.
After a prologue that sets the scene for the young teenager's relationship with her mother, the story opens with a sequence that invites us to discover Kuei's feelings, impressions, and memories in an off-camera setting. In this aside, which gives access to the character's inner self, Kuei shares the memory she has of a saying she learned when she was little at school: "Your family is your strength as well as your weakness." These words open the film with a universal reflection as they foreshadow the story to come. In a modest speech, the young girl implicitly evokes her "difference" and the experience of growing up in a country other than the one her family comes from. This same phrase also evokes the little sister Kuei must take care of, even though all she wants is to skateboard and get closer to Skylar, a boy who also skates.
Torn between her romantic desire, the burst of freedom her four-wheeled skateboard offers her, and her duty as a big sister, Kuei's character wanders the streets of New York one summer day. The director gets as close as possible to her young actress's face to allow us to read what's going through her. We are moved by her emotions, her mixture of reserve and aplomb.
Sunflower, the nickname Skylar gives Kuei after discovering a sunflower on the back of her skateboard, is a sunny film. Shot digitally and punctuated with a few shots on film, the images are bathed in warm hues. The soundtrack evokes awakening, something growing, swelling: the desire to be free and to fall in love. This short film fits perfectly into a line of films, both long and short, that we call "coming of age" and which tell the story of the first pre-adolescent or adolescent emotions and the transition from childhood to adolescence. Among them, also shot in the United States and focused on Steeevie, a young 13-year-old skateboarder, is Jonah Hill's very handsome 90s film."
- Translated note from BENSHI
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