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 in the 1970s.
Plot 12-year-old Violetta is raised by her loving grandmother ("Mamie", the French equivalent of "Grandma") in 1970s Paris. Her volatile mother, Hanna has abandoned the family to pursue a career in photography and visits infrequently. During one of these visits, she invites Violetta to her apartment and asks her to model for her photographs, finding her to be a natural talent at modeling. She begins to dress Violetta in gaudy dresses and introduces her to Hanna's lover, painter Ernst, who finances her career. 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.
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.
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