Nona and her daughters: we saw the first series of Valérie Donzelli for Arte

Director Valérie Donzelli, whose moving and poetic style has emerged throughout her filmography (The Queen of Apples, The War Is Declared, Notre Dame), has a special place in French auteur cinema. With Nona and her daughters, she turned to television for the first time, and composed for the Arte channel an astonishing family portrait: that of a mother who raised her daughters freely, and now finds herself confronted with a a pregnancy as inexplicable as it was devastating at an age when she could finally refocus on her own desires.

The 9 x 30 minute format of the series allows its director – who worked on the writing with screenwriter Clémence Madeleine-Perdrillat (Mixed) – to exploit with undisguised pleasure recurring aspects of her cinema, such as the musical comedy through sung sequences, or warm settings in small interiors made of odds and ends and full of details.

The actresses, in tune, deliver a cheerful choral score in the role of triplets, each having inherited a male nickname and chosen family, work or studies as a refuge. Their mother’s ordeal will give them the opportunity to strengthen family ties, but also to confront themselves and their own frustrations. A fable about the sorority as unique as it is successful, Nona and her daughters will be broadcast in early December on Arte.