Le Hérisson

In this adept and well-acted little sentimental charmer, a screen adaptation of Muriel Barbery's bestseller The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a precocious and artistic little rich girl, an intellectual concierge, and a benevolent Japanese gentleman come together in a posh Parisian apartment building for a brief period of understanding, communion, and the beginnings of love. The story is a little like an episode from Kay Thompson's Eloise, but set in Paris with philosophical and orientalist touches, a girl who is more smug and priggish than cute and an increasingly saccharine trajectory that is only just barely saved by a tart finale.

Paloma (Garance Le Guillemic) is continually filming her annoying family, her Minister father, her mother who is addicted to Freudian analysis, tranquilizers, and champagne and makes more fuss over her plants than her daughter, her non-entity sister, and people in the corridor of the luxury five-unit apartment building. As she films, she describes everyone and everything for us in a whisper into the camera recorder. She has concluded that her life is a fish bowl from which there is no meaningful escape and therefore on her next birthday, her twelfth, she has decided she will commit suicide. Meanwhile she makes her films, stockpiles her mother's tranquilizers, and does drawings more likely for a professional illustrator than a sub-teen kid.

Meanwhile one of the wealthy residents dies of a heart attack, and the Japanese gentleman, Monsieur Ozu (no relation to the director, we learn later) moves into a flat miraculously and instantly converted into a palace of Zen minimalism with gray walls, black ceramics, and other delights, an oasis of quiet, aesthetic calm, and Japonism. Even the concierge, or building janitor (though the term today is usually "gardien," concierge being considered outmoded), Madame Michel (Josiane Balasko), has a place that's rather handsomely decorated; quite lovely wallpaper. Paloma's room is a throwaway, we get only glimpses of it, but it's obviously as elaborately crafted.

Madame lets Monsieur Ozu into his new place, and he discovers something: she has read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. And judging from the fact that her cat is named Léo, he correctly concludes she's a great fan of the Russian writer. He begins wooing her, starting by presenting her with an elegant two-volume edition of the novel. Other gifts and invitations follow, with dinner in Ozu's flat prepared by him, a private screening of a classic Japanese film on video that Madame Michel has, and finally a date at a posh sushi bar. With the help of a pal who's a lady dry cleaner, Madame Michel gets a complete makeover, with a fashionable haircut and nice clothes.

Paloma is ridiculously and ultimately unbearably clever, most of the other characters are mere objects, Monsieur Ozu is just an attractive gadget to draw Madame Michel out of her shell. Her place is full of books -- but TV-friendly too, though she probably keeps the set on with the sound off merely to play the role of the classic concierge -- an aging, overweight, ugly, irritable old bag who sits around watching TV all day. Madame Michel sits with a purring Léo (though Monsieur Ozu has even better cats, by the way) reading good books -- when she is not cleaning up in the courtyard and sidewalk and being wooed by the wealthy, mysterious Japanese gentleman (we never learn where the dough comes from).

Paloma, who partakes of some of the wisdom of novelist Barbery, a teacher of philosophy resident in Japan, announces during one of her monologues that she is sure Madame Michel is a "hedghog" (hérisson), prickly on the outside but possessed of an interior that's subtle and kind.

The Hedgehog/Le hérisson itself partakes of some of the essential qualities suited to international bestsellers. Its simplifications are satisfying, if you don't go too deep. Its world is appealing and somewhat exotic. Its truths are self-evident. To do her credit, the excellent Josiane Balasko gives a degree of complexity to her performance one could hardly expect from such material. She is, of course, the film's most many-layered character. At least she has the outer and inner layers Paloma attributes to the hedgehog. Paloma admires her because she has "found the perfect way to hide." She can spend hours in her back room with her great books, while appearing on the outside to be a frumpy old creature that people don't even see and never bother except to have her hold a package for them.

But the artificiality of ideas and the stereotypical nature of most of the characters make this, whatever its homely message of love and acceptance of life, altogether less humane and alive than a little film like François Dupeyron's 2003 Monsieur Ibrahim/Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran. That too was simplistic, but it had moments of life in it. Both films fade when compared to that other movie about a precocious girl's views, Julie Gavras' 2006 Blame It on Fidel/La faute à Fidel, which works through a child's sensibility to depict how -- from her viewpoint, anyway -- her family life goes quickly and irrevocably downhill when her parents become communist revolutionaries. Political realities stretch further than life lessons delivered in a completely contrived environment, even one in which a teenage boy can get laid.

This film received indifferent reviews in Paris after its summer (July 3, 2009) release, particularly from the more sophisticated media, but it looks like it might have good American art-house potential. It was part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema (jointly sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Unifrance) and screened at the Walter Reade Theater and the IFC Center, New York, in March 2010.

I suppose if you have not read the book on which this film is based (L'elegance du herisson) you might be a little bewildered. I and the the jam-packed audience I saw it with in Fremantle, Western Australia, had. It is a delightful study of three 'outsider' personalities: a precocious teenage girl, a very unusual concierge and a Japanese gentleman. It probably resonates more if you know France, especially Paris; even Europe would do. I am now looking for it on DVD (at a reasonable price for Region 4) because it is a film I know I will watch again and again for its delicate study of 'la condition humaine' - the character studies are delightful. Don't be put off by earlier reviews. Leave your prejudices outside the cinema and sit back and enjoy a delicate, delightful study of three very non-American people observed in a very non-American way. If Australians can appreciate this film, it should appeal to anyone with sensibilities.

Paloma Josse (Garance Le Guillermic) is a eleven year old girl disturbed by her privileged life in Paris. Her father Paul (Wladimir Yordanoff) is distracted by his government job while her mother Solange (Anne Brochet) drinks champagne with anti-depressants while talking to her plants. She decides she will kill herself in 165 days on her 12th birthday and begins to document the hypocrisy of the adults in her apartment building with her father's old camcorder. The apartment janitor, Renee, may appear to be a just another middle-aged woman who is bitter and grumpy, somewhat prickly, but when a new Japanese neighbor, Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa) moves in, he sees something else in her, something soft. This intrigues Paloma about "The Hedgehog", a term used to describe Renee. Despite the fact that Paloma and Renee are on opposite ends of the socioeconomic scale, both of them prefers to quietly observe life from a place of relative obscurity while dwelling on the edge of the society

The soul of the film is definitely the subtle love story between Kakuro and Renee. Kakuro surprises Renee by completing her comment that 'happy families are all alike,' with 'but each unhappy family is unique,' which is a direct quote from a novel during their first meeting. As Renee goes through her own transformation, the chemistry between her and Kakuro grows. It was then the three form a unique bond and we see Paloma and Renee emerge from hiding and begin to embrace life..

While adapting Muriel Barbery's bestselling novel "The Elegance of the Hedgehog", director Mona Achache makes a memorable directorial debut. She complements Barbery's style and enhances her work through Paloma's actions, doing things such as putting her older sister Colombe (Sarah Le Picard) in a 'fishbowl' by filming her through a glass of water (as a metaphor of Paloma's own life) and animating the drawings she created. While her character provides the narrative framing, young Le Guillermic makes an entertaining observer and narrator. The supporting cast as the Josse family gives a solid performance, creating a household which Paloma wish to escape from thoroughly believable. Igawa as Kakuro is gentle but understated and Balasko's Renee is a revelation, her performance is nuanced and graceful from within her dowdy exterior.

The Hedgehog is a heartwarming and unique tale, highlighting the importance of digging through the hard surface of life for the chance of discovering the hidden meanings and enjoyment beneath. Life, sometimes like the hedgehog, conceals a sophisticated elegance beneath a spiky veneer.

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This film is so good I wanted it to run forever. The unfolding of characters, especially Paloma --the 11 years old girl--and the Concierge of the building, are so masterful, that one seats there mesmerized waiting to see the new developments.

The concierge character is a tour de force. The way she starts, as an obscure caretaker, moving the trash cans of the rich neighbors out on the sidewalk --only five huge de luxe apartments at her charge-- retrieving the empty containers the next morning and always moody and dry (as she herself puts it to Paloma, the girl, "the perfect concierge" according to the accepted urban legend about concierges in people's mind), and then because of her unexpected interacting with that precocious girl and the impeccable Japanese new neighbor, her subtle but unstoppable changes are something to be seen (as are also the changes in Paloma and the perfect Japanese new neighbor).

The little girl's mother, psychoanalyzed and medicated, watering her plants and talking to them (I do it too) with much more love and infinite care than to her own daughter, is fully drawn in a very succinct and accurate way.

Paloma is left alone to her own devices, and they only consist of an old fashioned movie camera --her father's gift to her-- perennially in front of her face (she films everything that moves) and her drawings (delightful) where she expresses her most inner thoughts.

This is a perfect example of a French film --I ADORE this type of French cinema--where very little happens but in such an intimate and delicate communion with the viewer that it absorbs one's mind completely, and doesn't let go till the very end, in the most poignantly and unexpected possible way, as it's the case in the present film. See it, it's totally worth your while.

I only wish you'll enjoy it as much as I did. Precious.

Mona Achache's movie "Le hérisson" ("The Hedgehog" in English) is about a Parisian girl leading an unfulfilled life with her affluent family, and so she decides to commit suicide on her twelfth birthday. In the process of filming her apartment and family, the girl befriends the concierge.

The movie presents a good contrast between the girl's disillusionment with her posh but superficial world and the concierge's appreciation of what little she has, and showing how the concierge is able to develop a relationship with a Japanese widower who moves into the apartment building. The girl's filming her sister throughout the goldfish bowl is a metaphor for the new look that she's taking at her bourgeois existence. In the end, the girl does start to reconsider her suicidal plans. Achache made a very good movie, one that I truly recommend.