La vieille dame et les pigeons

If you have ever wondered what Sylvain Chomet, the creator of Les Triplettes de Belleville did before that, then I can tell you: it's this, an entirely characteristic, shorter and considerably darker tale of pigeons and policemen, allied to a cruel dig at American tourists in Paris. The animator's Searle-like style is already fully formed and one or two of the beloved character types from Belleville (the dog, the diminutive mother) appear here too. Vieille Dame is not however merely a dry run for the fully fledged feature, more an extended taster of a unique talent. At only 20 mins it is still worth seeking out and is coupled on disc with three other animations laced with dark humour, although sadly not by Chomet. Only available from Amazon.fr apparently as part of a 50 minute DVD, and without English subtitles - although as only one of the four animation uses language to any extent, and the lesser of these too, this is not a real problem. Recommended.

An absolutely splendid French short about a (to say the least) starving gendarme who discovers a lady feeding pigeons in the park and dresses up like a pigeon in a desperate attempt to get food. Strange indeed. Very nicely done, it really captures the atmosphere of Paris. Great animation, odd story, and the fat American tourists are just too damn funny.

This wonderfully dotty short film from the creator of Belleville Rendez-vous, Sylvain Chomet, really is fantastic. It has an original storyline - a starving gendarme, some greedy fat pigeons, a pigeon-obsessed lady, and some wild dancing.

The animation puts its grotesque characters (which put me in mind of the drawings of Gerald Scarfe) into a world all of their own, where the gendarme fantasises about food, is irritated by pigeons, and eventually dresses up as one of the birds himself to continually visit the old lady for slap-up meals.

'The Old Lady and the Pigeons' is the epitome of bad taste cartoons, a darkly fun half-hour in the company of skewed figures and warped minds.

"La vieille dame et les pigeons" ("The Old Lady and the Pigeons" in English) offers a comedic look at the lengths to which a person will go for self-preservation, as a malnourished policeman gets into the confidence of an old woman by dressing as a pigeon and getting her to feed him. But it turns out that he's not the only one who has plans in store.

An interesting trick that Sylvain Chomet's Academy Award-nominated short uses is the lack of dialogue except for the beginning and end. The only speech comes from stereotypical tourists from the US (those scenes actually have French subtitles). But the point is that this is a clever animated short. I think that these animated shorts are more interesting than the animated features whose sole selling point is star power. I recommend it.

After "Tripplets of Bellvile" (which is my favorite animated movie of all time) I was hungry for more of Sylvian Chomet unique world...

Thankfully I've soon found "The Old lady and the pigeons"! A movie set in the same universe and with the same charm and grotesque of the "Tripplets". Its short but but it will make you want watch it over and over again (over and over) Its very hard to describe this story without ruining for you as all of movie elements connect together in a wonderful way and story is building in a very oryginal way you never seen beafore. In fact this movie has "oryginal" written all over. Just trust me when I say - if you enjoy Tripplets or have a dark sense of humor you will enjoy this one very much!

WHY THEY Don't MAKE MORE MOVIES LIKE THIS is a riddle to me...