Wednesday, May 25, 2022 — 3
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
‘Petite Maman’ is a real-life
fantasy
Celine Sciamma’s “Portrait of a
Lady on Fire” was the first French
film I ever watched. I had never
thought that a film with sparse
dialogue and devoid of a score could
make me feel so many things. It was
unlike anything I had ever watched
before and I knew then that I was
watching an artist’s masterpiece. It
came as no surprise that Sciamma’s
“Petite Maman” rocketed to the top
of my movie list the second it was
released. I watched “Petite Maman”
at a nearly empty screening at Ann
Arbor’s State Theatre, and yet I
hardly noticed my solitude.
“Petite Maman” follows Nelly
(Joséphine Sanz, debut), an 8-year-
old girl who has just lost her
grandmother. Nelly and her parents
return to clean out the house that her
mother grew up in. In typical 8-year-
old fashion, Nelly’s curiosity leads her
to explore the house and the woods
behind it, and she meets a girl of the
same age named Marion, (Gabrielle
Sanz, debut) with whom she has
an instant and strangely familiar
connection. Their connection is made
even more intriguing, given that
Marion looks identical to Nelly and
shares a name with Nelly’s mother. It
is a story of grief, friendship and love
through a child’s eyes.
Sciamma’s style is at the forefront
in this movie, as she once again
relies on silent scenes and sounds of
nature to convey emotion. It’s a film
about a child, yet it’s not a children’s
film. Nelly reminded me so much of
myself as a kid. She conducts herself
the way you would expect an 8-year-
old to — full of curiosity and eager to
explore — but she’s also introspective
and quiet. She doesn’t quite say what
she’s feeling to anyone, yet with
every scene, you can tell exactly
what she’s thinking. This speaks
to the astounding performance of
Joséphine Sanz as well as her twin,
Gabrielle Sanz, who plays Marion
with the same force of personality.
Sciamma excels in portraying the
view of the world that we all had
in childhood: one where the days
consisted of exploration and asking
questions, there are no inhibitions
and you can make a new friend by
helping them build a treehouse, no
introductions necessary.
SWARA RAMASWAMY
Daily Arts Writer
How TikTok won my silly little queer heart
For a very long time, I was
insistent on leaving TikTok to the
kids. I’m only 21, but as somebody
who had to conduct a few Google
searches
to
make
sense
of
Instagram stories, I simply felt
too old for TikTok. I finally caved
when the jobs I was browsing
on Handshake (you know the
struggle)
were
asking
about
TikTok experience and fluency:
I thought to myself, “TikTok
CANNOT be the reason I don’t get
a job.”
I reluctantly made an account,
belaboring to create a funny and
clever username for far too long
(and I finally made one, albeit
not one that I will flaunt in an
interview for a grown-up job), and
began exploring the app. It was
relatively easy to use, with the
homepage including two streams
of content, one from TikTokers
(rolling my eyes as I type this
word) you follow and another,
the For You page, containing
recommended content based on
your follows, views and searches.
The Discover, Create, Inbox and
Profile pages were also relatively
self-explanatory. I was quickly
immersed in a flurry of “We Don’t
Talk about Bruno” videos that
got old fast, and TikToks using
“Misery” as background audio
to make fun of life’s rougher
moments that felt a little more
my speed. Still, over the first few
days, the app failed to hold my
attention, and I abandoned my
project as quickly as I had taken
it up.
Then the winter semester came
to an end, and I found myself in
that
post-finals-pre-summer-
job limbo. I considered another
possibility: Maybe TikTok didn’t
objectively suck, and I simply
hadn’t properly invested the care,
time and energy to cultivate a
stream of content that I enjoyed.
This possibility was an exciting
one; I’ve held the rest of my social
media accounts for five or more
years each. Maybe I had inundated
their algorithms with too much
information — or at least too much
information representative of a
person I no longer see when I look
in the mirror.
EMMY SNYDER
Daily Arts Writer
Design by Jennie Vang
‘Come Home the Kids Miss You’ is catchy but unremarkable
When Jack Harlow first emerged
onto the rap scene in 2015, his intangible
qualities such as his swagger and
trademark Southern twang worked to
set him apart from the rest of the crop
of rising wordsmiths. Harlow and his
Louisville-based
collective,
Private
Garden, were very much outsiders. As
a goofy-looking, curly-haired white kid
from Kentucky, Harlow was often not
taken seriously within the rap game,
and he had to earn all of the respect he
has garnered since. Clips and songs from
his adolescence show how dedicated
he has been to rapping as a craft since
he was a young boy. His major label
debut mixtape, 2018’s Loose, and his
subsequent project, 2019’s Confetti,
display this hunger. In these first two
albums, Harlow sounds raw, composed
and in touch with Louisville’s underrated
hip-hop scene. His beats skew towards
the eclectic and psychedelic, and his
natural swagger in the two tapes is
apparent to listeners, as his cadence and
delivery were remarkably far along for a
rapper as young as he was then.
In 2020, Harlow released the single
that turned him into a household name,
“WHATS
POPPIN.”
Harlow
fans
rejoiced that Louisville’s favorite son
was finally getting recognized by a more
mainstream audience, but the song itself
signified a shift in Harlow’s sonic profile
from intricate, lush instrumentals to
basic trap beats.
This shift is quite apparent in his most
recent release: the highly anticipated
Come Home the Kids Miss You. The two
singles that preceded the album, “Nail
Tech” and the Fergie-sampling “First
Class,” were catchy, if a little boring. The
hunger that you could hear in Harlow’s
voice on Loose and Confetti is all but
gone, and it seems like the trappings
of life as a mega-star have tapered his
creativity and drive. His intent now
seems to be making inoffensive radio-
rap fodder — a major deviation from
his previous work. While he previously
made melodic rap tracks, that aspect
of his repertoire has definitely been
emphasized as Harlow’s commercial
focus shifted towards hunting for
streams. Where Harlow’s whiteness
previously served as a detriment to his
career in the local scene, the mountain-
moving national PR push that he has
benefitted from since the release of
“WHATS POPPIN” is in no small part
due to his “marketability” (see: white
privilege).
This negative transformation isn’t
just a product of his aim to add more
melody to his albums, as previous R&B-
influenced tracks, like Confetti’s “THRU
THE NIGHT,” work brilliantly. Harlow
still has a ton of natural talent; at times
on this new project, his swagger and
flow mitigates his poor writing and basic
production choices. He also has a good
sense of humor and a rare boldness and
confidence for a rapper of his stature.
When these intangibles come to the
forefront, the album is at its best, such
as on the shameless DM-slide of “Dua
Lipa” and the breezy “Lil Secret,” which
has the best beat on the project — a
smooth, vocals-centered instrumental.
“Like a Blade of Grass” also sounds like
something that could’ve been on Loose
or Confetti, with its bouncy drums
reminiscent of early Harlow gems like
“SUNDOWN,” though it would have
been better if he didn’t try to sing on
it. He’s not off-key or anything, but his
singing lacks the signature Kentucky lilt
that makes his rapping so endearing.
In general, Harlow spends way
too much of the album trying to be
something he’s not. He gives a half-
hearted Drake impression on “Churchill
Downs,” a track that also features the
Canadian rapper. Drake sounds more
natural than Harlow on the song, but he
still isn’t excellent. Harlow has shown
that his collaborations with talented
singers can be brilliant, like Confetti’s
stellar
2forwOyNE
collaboration,
“WARSAW,” but his own crooning
tends to fall flat on Come Home the Kids
Miss You. While his career may be in a
better place than it was three years ago,
his music has deteriorated. Without the
example of his early work, Harlow seems
alarmingly similar to industry plants in
other genres, like Billie Eilish, GAYLE
or Iann Dior. At least Eilish still can lean
back on her unique voice and world-class
songwriter of a brother; Harlow just
sounds uninspired.
RYAN BRACE
Daily Arts Writer
This image is from the official album cover of “Come Home the Kids Miss You,” owned by
Generation Now/Atlantic Recording Corporation
Read more at michigandaily.com
Read more at michigandaily.com