Mila

Mila Massé is the young daughter of Myriam and Paul Massé, whose dependence on Louise’s care makes the girl’s closeness to the nanny both a source of delight and a measure of danger. Mila welcomes Louise into her games and seeks her comfort, yet she also experiences the fear Louise deliberately creates and, as the relationship tightens, the pressure of being held too firmly. Her story shows how a child’s trust can be cultivated through intimate care and then used to control her.

Identity and Family

Mila is Myriam and Paul’s daughter and Adam’s older sister. She is still young enough to be carried on her father’s shoulders, to plead over putting toys away, and to depend on adults for reassurance. In the household, her mother’s demanding work and Louise’s expanding share of domestic care shape the rhythms of her days. As Myriam increasingly leaves practical tasks to the nanny, Louise becomes not simply a caregiver Mila sees for a set interval, but a constant presence in the family’s intimate routines.

Her parents’ decision to hire a nanny is framed by the expectations and calculations of employers. Paul prepares questions and schedules thirty minutes for each interview, while the couple tidies the apartment to present themselves as serious, orderly parents. Myriam, meanwhile, is troubled by advice that a caregiver’s children should be left in her home country so the worker can remain available for evenings and babysitting. Mila’s home life is thus organized through an unequal arrangement: her parents’ work depends on a worker whose own family circumstances are treated as a practical consideration.

Games, Trust, and Fear

When Louise first meets the family, Mila has just woken from a nap. Rather than demand the child’s attention, Louise pretends not to see her and searches for a vanished princess. Mila laughs, and Myriam later remembers the encounter as an immediate bond, saying that her daughter chose the nanny. Their relationship develops through imaginative games that Louise stages with elaborate settings, costumes, and plots. Mila may sometimes lose interest while Louise urges her to begin, a small indication that the adult’s enthusiasm and the child’s wishes do not always coincide.

Hide-and-seek reveals the darker edge of this play. Louise disappears without warning, chooses hiding places from which she can watch the children, and refuses to answer when they call. Adam becomes so distressed that he sobs, while Mila fears that Louise has truly left them alone in the apartment. Even after Mila learns to search under beds, behind curtains, and inside cupboards, Louise finds new hiding places and remains hidden through the child’s tears. The game’s pleasure is built on surprise, but its governing power belongs to Louise: she decides when the game begins, how long the children search, and when their distress will end.

Care and Growing Dependence

Louise’s practical care becomes part of the family’s ordinary life. After the children’s bath, she continues cleaning despite Myriam telling her she can go home. She folds towels, empties the washing machine, prepares the children’s beds, and starts making dinner. When Myriam tries to take the saucepan from her, Louise gently pushes her back and tells her to rest and enjoy her children. The offer is tender, but it also marks how much of the household’s work Louise is taking over. As weeks pass, she arrives earlier and leaves later; Myriam no longer calls to report delays, and Mila stops asking when her mother will return.

Mila’s attachment is visible in her response when Louise comes back after two nights of anxiety. At half past seven, wearing blue pajamas, she runs to the nanny, leaps into her arms, and exclaims, “Louise, it’s you! You’re back!” Adam also recognizes Louise’s voice and familiar presence, pushing away from Myriam to reach her. The scene shows that Louise’s care has become emotionally consequential to both children, not merely a service their parents arrange.

Louise also tries to make the prospect of another baby part of Mila’s hopes. She asks whether Mila would like a little brother or sister whom they could care for together, expecting the child to pass the idea on to Myriam. When Mila asks her mother whether she is carrying a baby, Myriam laughs and says she would rather die than have one. Mila’s question is innocent, but Louise has loaded it with her own expectation that a new child would keep her needed in a household that might otherwise have less for her to do.

Separation, Control, and Resistance

On an evening outing, Mila helps Louise persuade Myriam to agree to dinner away from home. Louise offers to take the children so their parents can dine together, and Mila asks her mother to let them go. Afterward, Louise leads the children through unfamiliar streets. The route leaves Mila uncertain of where she is and whether her parents know where she has gone. She looks to Louise for reassurance, but the nanny continues forward in silence, offering only the instruction to keep coming. In Rue Montmartre, Mila sees women outside bars and feels increasingly far from the world she recognizes. Louise eventually stops and asks what flavor of ice cream she wants; the treat briefly gives the child something else to concentrate on, but it does not undo the disorientation of the walk.

The account of Mila’s disappearance at the amusement park makes the conflict more explicit. When a stranger intervenes, Mila pulls away from her and throws herself against Louise’s legs. Louise lifts her, kisses and comforts her, and apologizes for her own negligence. Once the stranger has left, however, the embrace tightens until Mila says that she cannot breathe. Louise warns her never to wander away again, telling her that a bad man could steal her and keep her where her parents would never find her. Mila bites Louise’s shoulder hard enough to draw blood. The child’s bite is a physical refusal of the suffocating hold and the frightening story, even as neither she nor Louise tells Myriam what happened.

Their silence creates a private bond with an uneasy structure: each now has a grievance against the other, and the shared secret makes them feel more united than before. Mila has not simply been reassured into dependence; she has learned that closeness to Louise can involve fear, force, and concealment. At the same time, her later eagerness to return to Louise’s arms shows that this frightening episode does not immediately erase the attachment built through daily care.

Narrative Role

Mila’s experience makes the contradictions in Louise’s caregiving legible at a child’s scale. The same nanny who invents elaborate games, prepares meals, and welcomes Mila back into her arms also stages abandonment as play, withholds reassurance, and uses the threat of a stranger to enforce obedience. Mila’s distress is not an abstract warning: it is expressed through calls that go unanswered, an anxious walk through unfamiliar streets, and a bite delivered when a protective embrace becomes constricting.

The family’s final afternoon supplies a grim counterpoint to these earlier scenes. In reconstructing the crime, Captain Nina Dorval asks Paul about the children’s usual response to bath time and whether they might have been surprised to be bathed at four in the afternoon. She repeats the familiar ritual of testing the water before calling the children in. Caretaking gestures that once belonged to the ordinary life of the household thus return in the investigation as evidence surrounding the children’s deaths. Mila’s story is marked by the distance between the tenderness she seeks and the safety that tenderness should have guaranteed.