La vieille dame et les pigeons

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.

I'm not sure why, but this short piece was powerful enough to resonate with me on so many levels. It must have been the hungry gendarme, who so desperately was in need to get feed. The story line is something more or less grotesque in nature but what touched me the most in this "weirdly appealing" film was the character development. From the first moment the gendarme appears on the tourists' camera shots, you know you want to get to know this strange guy more and more. Well, of course it demands a terrible amount of talent and skill to be able to animate a cartoon character so human-like and impressive but this film seems to be backed up by a group of genius creators. Some scenes and sequences prove the animators have really let their imagination go wild and even though the film's run-time may exceed the normal amount expected from a short piece, you'll enjoy every single frame of it. Those familiar with Chomet and his distinguished style, know that it's really hit or miss with him and as long as you're not looking for vain sentiment in a film, then this piece is definitely for you.

but one who works in great manner. because it is an embroidery of stereotypes and clichés. because the poor gendarme represents more than the story of starvation but the social parable of success.and its price. and the old lady is adorable.short, one of films who preserves the flavor of Paris. with each its pieces/ingredients, from tourists to the...pigeons. and, sure, the music, humor and the dishes.

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.

"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.