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If you are a Mommy and believe - for whatever reason - that your kids need to see Daddy cry over a movie, just sit everybody down to watch "Ponette."
This is one French movie that not even the most subtitle-averse clod will hate, because most of the dialog comes from cute little French children. It just so irrationally amazing to hear children speaking a "foreign" language - so fluently! - that every word on the screen is automatically precious.
But once you get over the sheer charm of it, you will be simply stunned by the performance of five-year-old Victoire Thivisol. The director and adult actors all had a particular genius for evoking the correct dialog from Thivisol, when she could not possibly have memorized such a script verbatim.
Ponette is a little girl who has lost her mother, which sounds like a framework for pure melodrama, but I assure you that melodrama is entirely absent from this film. There are scenes of conversation between father and daughter that seem so much like a documentary that you feel almost ashamed for invading their privacy.
The climactic scene with Ponette will tear your heart out. And it's all done with the kind of emotional purity and honesty that would make any serious actor ask, "Why can't I do that?"
If Dad doesn't cry you need to get another Dad.
