Paloma (Le Guillermic) is a prepubescent who, desperate to avoid becoming a petit bourgeois like her parents, decides she's going to kill herself on her 12th birthday. Then she befriends her equally idiosyncratic neighbors: a Japanese gentleman (Igawa) who's just moved in next door; and the building's reclusive, middle-aged janitor (Balasko), nicknamed the Hedgehog. ('Prickly on the outside, but...') Mona Achache's character study plays like a Gallic version of a Sundance flick, complete with on-the-nose references – Igawa's character is named Mr. Ozu – and just enough offbeat touches to make it seem more deep than it actually is. A climactic epiphany that feels like O. Henry lite doesn't help matters in the slightest. David Fear
Length: 100 minutes
Country of origin: France
Year of production: 2009
Director: Mona Achache
Cast: Josiane Balasko, Garance Le Guillermic, Togo Igawa, Anne Brochet.
© 2007 - 2013 Time Out Group Ltd. All rights reserved. All material on this site is © Time Out.
TOS RSS feed
TOS Twitter
TOS on Facebook
Print
Email
I loved the book being an avid reader and a francophile to boot. The movie is a rather good version with all the wordiness chopped out. There are some things I wish they had kept but on the whole you get the flavor.
Posted on Thu 07 Jun 2012 08:17:29