This new decade is starting with a true ode to feminism thanks to the new film “Little Women” directed by the multi-tasking Greta Gerwig. Adapted from the eponymous novel written 150 years ago by Louisa May Alcott, is the fabulous story we all know: a family of 4 very different girls and their mother who are forced to survive in a difficult world without their father, who left them for the Civil War. Classic work by excellence, we could at first fear its squareness and its inability to talk to the contemporary women; we couldn’t have been more wrong.

The plot is very well constructed, with a subtle alternation between two different life periods for the main character Jo March, interpreted by the radiant Saoirse Ronan, the author’s alter ego. Torn between her childhood’s sweetness as a girl, surrounded by her sisters and the difficulties to find her place as an independent and accomplished woman as an adult; she will face adversity and conquer her freedom in the 19th century American society.

The cast is absolutely impeccable: Emma Watson, Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, and the reserved Eliza Scanlen show a great complicity and perfectly fit their respective characters’ behaviour. The story has been quite modernised for the better, with a strong feminist narrative describing some of the challenges modern women have to endure nowadays.

I could talk for hours about the marvellous costumes, sets, and depths of its themes like the acceptance of death, the necessary strength to fight against your condition to reach your happiness, or even the ebb and flow of time that brings close and moves away members of the same family. But I won’t, because this movie is the exact piece of beauty we need to start 2020 with; it is not a film we should talk about, but simply enjoy. For your sisters, daughters, mothers, wives, and all the important women in your life: it is a tribute I couldn’t encourage you enough to go and see for yourself.

Director: Greta Gerwig
Writers: Greta Gerwig, Louisa May Alcott (based on the novel by)
Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh
Aurélien Petit
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