Paloma is an 11-year-old girl living with her rich family in an apartment in Paris. She's decided that she's going to take her life when she turns 12. While she's counting the days until her birthday, she documents life around her with her father's old video camera, sharing her point of view and insights. The angst she feels and expresses seems quite typical to me of girls at her age, moving from "tween" into adolescense. I'm somewhat reminded of the book Reviving Ophelia.
But things start to change for her when she makes some new friends in building, thereby changing her perspective on life. Renée is the super of Paloma's building, who reads Tolstoy and other great authors' books to her cat Leo. Her life starts to change in exciting new ways when she meets a new resident in her building who is Japanese and also shares her love of books.
When I first started watching this film, I thought, "Do I really want to watch this?" But, I found myself getting drawn in by the characters and their lives. This film is based on the novel titled The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.
Renee is portrayed by Josiane Balasko, who I think is a great actress both in comedy and dramatically.Togo Igawa portrays Kakuro and Paloma is portrayed by Garance Le Guillermic. This French film was directed by Mona Achache. I'm looking forward to viewing and writing about more films that have them as cast or director or writer.
Some of my favorite quotes from this film:
"We can be friends. We can be anything we want."--Kakuro
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - quoted from Tolstoy's book Anna Karenina.
Some scenes from this film.
The French title of this film is Le hérisson. A hedgehog is an animal that is quite prickly on the outside and apparently quite tender on the inside. Cars are one of the greatest threats to hedgehogs. A favorite pet for some people are pygmy hedgehogs. Here's a link to some images that I think are absolutely cutsie-wutsie! Link to cute little hedgehog images!
Here's the trailer for The Hedgehog.
