Àma Gloria review – French coming-of-age drama is a modest gem

One of the year’s most hypnotic performances nestles inside this seemingly modest French-language coming-of-age drama. Gifted six-year-old newcomer Louise Mauroy-Panzani is middle-class Parisian Cléo, whose world falls apart when her adored nanny, the titular Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego, also superb), is forced to return to Cape Verde. Gloria, about to become a grandmother, hits on a compromise: Cléo can visit during the summer holidays and get to know Gloria’s pregnant daughter, Fernanda (Abnara Gomes Varela), and wary young son, César (Fredy Gomes Tavares, fantastic).

The motherless Cléo, with her thick glasses and soft cheeks, is plainly vulnerable. Yet a strength of the script is that all the main characters are shown to have missed out on mothering. Equally refreshing is the fact that Gloria doesn’t conform to “good” servant stereotypes (she’s very different from the selfless nanny in Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, as one vivid set piece involving the ocean makes clear). French-Georgian director Marie Amachoukeli uses simple, child-friendly animation to help us understand the bond between Cléo and Gloria; these segments essentially function as breezy, dreamy flashbacks. Meanwhile, a last-act football match provides insight into the (well-earned) solidarity between César and his friends. Not since Lukas Moodysson’s Together has a casual game of footie been deployed to such euphoric effect. Glorious!

• In UK and Irish cinemas now