The Hedgehog (***1/4)

When someone asked me, before I saw this, what it was about, I said something like that it was about a middle-aged woman who blossoms. To which the reply was, isn’t that what every independent movie is about. Actually, this is a French movie, and while I have definitely seen French variations on that theme, in no case was the story told from the point of a precocious eleven-year-old who plans to commit suicide on her twelfth birthday.

This suicide plot point is lifted right from the Muriel Barbery novel the film is based on, and of course gives the story some measure of suspense. It’s something about how the girl (who’s a year older in the book) is disgusted by the banality of the adult world around her, specifically that of her parents, and sees their elite lifestyle as a trap best avoided by dying. Still, her apparent contempt for the bourgeousie who inhabit her posh Paris apartment building is tempered by the fact that she also seems intensely curious about them.

The building’s newest resident is of the same class as the others, yet that is tempered either by the fact that he is Japanese, or cultured rather than crass. And somehow, the girl, the Japanese man, and the middle-aged woman, who is the building superintendent, form a mutual bond. This is the sort of movie in which the superintendent happens to have seen a 50-year-old Japanese film but never eaten Japanese food and the pre-teen happens to be a knowledgeable player of Go, the chess-like Japanese game that she insists is nothing like chess, nor Japanese.

Even so, the idea that the girl really plans to kill herself is easily the least believable aspect of the story. Insofar as the rest of the plot hinges in some way on the planned demise, the story suffers, but not so much as you’d think. As elegantly told by the director, Mona Achache, the story is almost a fairy tale Where in Barbery’s novel the youngest character can merely seem like a snob, Achache emphasizes the kindness behind the diffident exterior. In embodying both, actress Garance Le Guillermic is a real find.


IMDB link


viewed 9/14/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 9/15/11–10/11/11

Tokyo! (**1/2)

Three directors, three segments.

The first part, Michel Gondry’s “Interior Design,” is probably the best, and for most of its length the most conventional. The Tokyo Gondry (Be Kind Rewind, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) portrays is cramped and expensive, like many large cities. (The segment was adapted from a graphic novel called Cecil and Jordan in New York.) The main characters are a filmmaker and his girlfriend, who’ve just moved to the city and are temporarily sharing a friend’s tiny flat. Just as the plot and characters have been developed, though, it takes a turn for the fantastic, with the ending ultimately too abrupt and unsatisfying.

On the other hand, Leos Carax’s (Pola X) “Merde” was unsatisfying throughout. Featuring one of the most irritating central characters since Tom Green in Freddy Got Fingered, a crazy red-haired dude who comes up from the sewers and creates mayhem, it’s the only segment featuring non-Japanese characters. Possibly it is saying something about the country’s cultural homogeneity. Or not.

Finally, Japan native Joon-ho Bong (The Host, Memories of Murder) presents “Shaking Tokyo,” the shortest and simplest segment, about the paradoxical isolation big-city residents can experience. Its central character is a hikkomori, a hermit who survives on a parental stipend and delivered food. A chance event leads to his first human interaction in ten years.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 4/14/09

Duck Season (***1/2)

This deceptively simple, black and white charmer follows two 14-year-old boys as they spend a Sunday afternoon in a modest apartment, playing video games, ordering pizza, and revealing something about themselves in the process.

This deceptively simple little charmer follows two 14-year-old Mexican boys as they spend a Sunday afternoon in a modest apartment. The poster for the movie (a feature debut for director Fernando Eimbcke) announces it as “presented by” one of its producers Alfonso Cuarón, who directed the most recent Harry Potter movie as well as Y Tu Mamá También. This didn’t blow me away like Y Tu Mamá También, but it similarly takes a basic story about two pals hanging out and slowly fills in little pieces of the characters’ lives and how their relationship to each other is likely to change. There’s also the older woman, in this case the 16-year-old next door. This movie probably isn’t everyone’s cup of tequila, and not just because it’s in black and white. Eimbcke favors long takes with a static camera, somewhat reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise, Broken Flowers). The most overtly dramatic events in the movie are whether the pizza man will make it in under 30 minutes, and who will win the big video soccer match. (Both of those end up being the subject of major debate and major plot points.) But I really like a movie that can take a slice of life, use it to tell something beyond the immediate scope of the story, and make us care about ordinary people.

IMDb link

posted 9/5/13

Just Like Heaven (*3/4)

In this silly Reese Witherspoon-Mark Ruffalo romantic comedy, a handsome duo find themselves sharing a San Francisco flat. She shrewishly insists he’s trespassing, while he insists she’s actually dead. Sound amusing? The dumb first half finds him buying stacks of books and hiring ghostbusters (complete with theme music) and such to get rid of her. I noticed one woman a few rows behind me wildly cackling at such lines as “Who put Sponge Bob in the pasta?” The second half goes all gushy but is a relative improvement.

IMDb link

circulated via email 9/22/05 and posted 11/19/13