Drôles d'oiseaux

Short, slightly acerbic but otherwise breezy film that's chock-full of visual metaphors.

If you wondered what Bernard Black (Dylan Moran of Black Books) would be like by 2040, this movie gives us a glimpse in Georges (Jean Sorel), but just across the Channel in Paris.

Happiness and sadness, love and loss, life and death. Soaring and falling to earth. Will the spider catch this seagull? Will the seagull, despite its stubborn nature and love of urban Paris, recognise the danger and escape?

A piece with fine economy of dialogue, the players allowed to convey motivation and feeling physically, often with just a glance. Well-judged narration aids the cause here too.

Not a bad way to spend an hour and ten minutes. During which, it will seem not much is happening. On reflection, you realise that's not the case at all.

The main actor now in his 80s once was compared to Alain Delon

the main actress is Isabelle Huppert's daughter and extremely pretty and very good at acting too

there is also Virginie Ledoyen as her usual spunky self; always a big presence even in a secondary role

It has almost the quality of a play so few being involved

We also have arguably the most "Quartier Latin" street of the Latin Quarter Rue de La Montagne Sainte Geneviève

It is a film you could only make make in Paris or maybe in The Village or Plaka in Athens; a sort of highly-cultured bubble away from the world most know as normal

There is a tryst-like event and then it goes away

Nothing truly happens but then much happens too

There is a mystery from the past coming back but we never really know the detail

It is a short film 70 mn in length ...

Movie with a slow rythm, this movie seems to be used by its director Elise Girard as an opportunity to mix personal and social topics with anachronism and absurd. Views of a discreet Paris, almost empty. A strange relationship (unfortunately partly fishy). Nuclear protests. Strange birds death. Books. Silence and eye dialogs. This gives it a je-ne-sais-quoi that can be enough to follow without failing this short movie to the end. It isn't a great movie but the delicateness that transpires from it - even if it is sought and does not always achieve the feat to feel genuine - is pleasant.