"Léon: The Professional": "Little Sister", is she really mature or just pretending to be mature?

In the past two years, many old films have been re-screened in cinemas. "Léon: The Professional" is a classic French film from 30 years ago. The film tells the story of Leon, a killer living in the slums, and his neighbor girl Matilda.

The intersection between the killer and the girl comes from the neighbor girl Matilda knocking on the killer's door and asking him to let her take refuge in his house and help her take revenge on the murderer. In the movie, Matilda, who was only 12 years old, showed maturity beyond her age and became a synonym for "precocious" in the hearts of movie fans.

What is precocious puberty? Physical precocity often refers to "precocious sexual puberty", which is a physiological state with a clear medical definition. The definition of "precocious puberty" is more than 2.5 standard deviations earlier than the average age, which is a pathological phenomenon. Female precocious puberty generally refers to the development of secondary sexual characteristics in girls before the age of 8 or the onset of menstruation before the age of 10. Because children with precocious puberty grow earlier and the closure of their epiphysis is also advanced, they may be shorter in adulthood. In addition, the premature appearance of sexual characteristics and development of reproductive organs may affect the psychological development of children and lead to psychological disorders.

The girl in the movie is obviously not "precocious". Matilda is already 12 years old, which is the normal physiological age for sexual development. From her appearance, she also looks like she has just started to develop. The audience thinks that Matilda is "precocious", which refers to "psychological precocity", that is, her psychological age is more mature than her actual age. In the stage of transitioning from adolescence to adulthood, the brain undergoes important changes, and cognitive functions are also developed, which are manifested in maintaining attention, inhibiting impulses, controlling behavior, conducting risk assessment and decision-making, and emotional processing. We often hear that "this child is very mature in mind". "Mature in mind" refers to cognitive-social maturity, specifically, a person's concepts and beliefs about conflict, uncertainty, authority, and authority. As they grow up, individuals develop from simple, concrete, self-centered thinking to more complex, abstract, and multi-perspective thinking. For example, as their minds mature, adolescents will begin to consider the needs of others and society more from their self-centered needs, and will be able to recognize the connection between current behavior and future results.

In the 1950s, psychologists proposed the concepts of "mental maturity" and "emotional maturity". Psychologists at that time defined "emotional maturity" as "the ability to promote and guide emotional tendencies to achieve desired goals". Emotionally mature people are result-oriented, have a high desire to achieve goals, take well-thought-out risks, seek information to minimize uncertainty, hope for success rather than fear failure, and regard setbacks as controllable rather than personal defects. Psychologist Dean at that time also summarized 14 aspects of emotional maturity, such as the ability to cope with stress, the ability to deal with anger, responsibility, communication, security, self-social center, etc. However, due to the limitations of the times, some of the content now seems to have nothing to do with "emotional maturity". For example, in terms of "heterosexual relationships", homosexual tendencies were considered to be a manifestation of immaturity at that time, but according to current cognition, sexual orientation has nothing to do with maturity or immaturity.

Psychologists have different understandings of the connotation and specific manifestations of "psychological maturity". For example, Greenberger proposed that "social psychological maturity" is a kind of ability: the ability to take responsibility, accept the consequences of behavior according to one's own characteristics and needs, and make responsible decisions. Researchers also divide this maturity into three aspects: work orientation, self-responsibility, and identity. Work orientation refers to the individual's willingness to take responsibility, self-responsibility refers to the willingness to control oneself rather than follow others, and identity refers to understanding oneself.

Galambos et al. further defined "psychological maturity" in a measurable way, believing that psychosocial maturity refers to an individual's adaptive functioning and socio-emotional adaptability, including independent execution, effective interpersonal communication and interaction, social responsibility, etc. Galambos believes that when evaluating the level of maturity, one should include one's own subjective feelings (compared to actual age, whether one thinks one is older or younger), adult behaviors (such as drinking), and psychological maturity (i.e., work orientation, self-responsibility, and identity mentioned above).

Based on the performance of self-judgment, behavior and psychological maturity, Galambos and colleagues analyzed adolescents aged 10-17 and divided them into three categories according to their social and psychological maturity: one category scored high in subjective age (feeling older than the actual age), scored high in problem behavior, and scored low in psychological maturity. These adolescents are called pseudo-mature adolescents, so named because they feel mature but lack real psychological maturity. The second category is immature adolescents, who feel younger than their actual age, have lower levels of problem behavior, and lower psychological maturity. The third group is mature adolescents, who feel slightly older than their actual age, have lower levels of problem behavior, and score the highest on psychological maturity indicators. Compared with mature adolescents, pseudo-mature and immature adolescents have a significantly stronger desire to grow older. Compared with pseudo-mature and mature adolescents, immature adolescents are less important to their friends. The overall picture is that pseudo-mature adolescents seem to be moving quickly towards adulthood without acquiring the responsibilities and behaviors associated with real maturity, while immature adolescents are moving at a slower pace towards an unknown destination, and mature adolescents seem to be well suited to their environment and grow at a reasonable rate.

Matilda is "fake mature" when she first appears in the movie. She thinks she has grown up and likes to "pretend to be an adult" in her specific behaviors, such as smoking and wearing sexy clothes. But true maturity means responsibility, whether it is for yourself or others, and also includes the management and control of emotions.

At the end of the movie, Matilda reaches true maturity - she returns to school and becomes a student again, which is responsible for herself. She plants flowers symbolizing Leon on campus, which is not only her letting go of obsession and pain, but also the best way to deal with the ambiguous relationship between herself and Leon.

Written by Wang Richu, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences