My Little Princess

My Little Princess is a 2011 drama film directed by Eva Ionesco and inspired by her relationship with her mother, the well-known artistic photographer Irina Ionesco whose pictures of her young daughter caused controversy when they were published back in the 1970s.

Plot
Violetta is raised by her grandmother ("Mamie", the French equivalent of "Grandma"). Her mother Hanna tries to make a living on taking photographs and concentrates on her dreams to become a famous artist. In order to succeed as an artist she doesn't worry about dating men of questionable reputation. Only every now and then her mother visits her daughter but during these occasions it occurs to her that her daughter could be a potential model. She starts exploiting her daughter who by transforming into a kind of Lolita becomes increasingly alienated from other children of her age. At school she is eventually frequently insulted and rejected. Then Mamie dies and Hanna's photographs are about to unequivocally overstep the line of acceptability. Hanna even coerces Violetta mercilessly into cooperation by withholding her food in case she doesn't agree to pose for increasingly daring photographs. Eventually Hanna's right of custody for her twelve-year-old daughter is at stake.

Cast

 * Isabelle Huppert as Hanna Giurgiu
 * Anamaria Vartolomei as Violetta Giurgiu
 * Denis Lavant as Ernst
 * Louis-Do de Lencquesaing as Antoine Dupuis
 * Georgetta Leahu as Mamie
 * Jethro Cave as Updike
 * Pascal Bongard as Jean
 * Anne Benoît as Madame Chenus
 * Johanna Degris-Agogue as Apolline
 * Déborah Révy as Nadia
 * Lou Lesage as Rose
 * Nicolas Maury as Louis
 * Pauline Jacquart as Fifi

Reception
German magazine Focus found Anamaria Vartolomei was convincing as a young girl whose life eventually turns into a nightmare because of her mother's artistic ambitions in 1970s Paris. "Painful personal experience is distilled into poignant drama in Eva Ionesco’s promising first feature My Little Princess. Autobiographical events from the 1970s are shaped into a fairytale-like narrative illuminating the abusive nature of Ionesco’s relationship with her mother Irina and eternal arguments over the limits of artistic freedom."

Critics also commented that Anamaria Vartolomei and Isabelle Huppert have portrayed the lack of affection so convincingly that they have even been accused of interacting insufficiently as actors. Regarding this, Huppert told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview that shooting of the film had been one of her more peculiar professional experiences because on the set she had had the feeling she was indeed the director's mother.