At least the Ozu connection has a thematic rationale: Paloma shares the outlook of kids in several of the director's best-known movies, including Ohayo, who reject the emptiness and hypocrisy of adult life.In France, Muriel Barbery's novel has been a sensation both critical and popular. But then The Hedgehog is not exactly a naturalistic drama, and its winsome charm and annoying contrivance are thoroughly intertwined.

The movie's invocations of Tolstoy and Yasujiro Ozu - not to mention Roland Barthes and William of Ockham - seem a little forced. And she plays Go with Ozu, who has turned his grand apartment into le petit Kyoto. She clashes with her Valium-dependent mother, who suggests that Paloma see a psychoanalyst. The girl, who speaks a little Japanese, does Asian-style ink drawings that turn into brief animated segments. Paloma does have other projects besides observing Renee and Ozu's tentative romance. He has no relation to the legendary Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, though a spiritual connection is strongly implied through his affection for the filmmaker. Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa) is a new apartment tenant. Paloma, who has already videotaped the removal of a neighbor's corpse, has yet to learn that death can sting. She considers grownup life to be as confined as the existence of her sister's goldfish, whose demise the girl attempts to arrange as a rehearsal for her own. Those who don't recognize those names as references to Tolstoy and characters from his Anna Karenina are probably not on The Hedgehog's wavelength.Īt first, precocious Paloma is intent on documenting her final months on Earth with her dad's old video camera. The long-widowed Renee cohabits with Leo, while the chivalrous Ozu has Kitty and Levin.

(The precocious girl's distracted, mostly absent father is a politician.) But the crucial cats belong to concierge Renee Michel (Josiane Balasko) - the story's bristly 'hedgehog' - and a new tenant, Japanese businessman Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa). Narrator Paloma Josse (Garance Le Guillermic) lives with her parents, high-school-age sister and two felines, named Constitution and Parliament. It's set in an upscale Paris apartment building where even the cats are literary. Certainly this adaptation, Mona Achache's directorial debut, is a very bookish movie. Perhaps the ending worked better in the book, Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which sold more than a million copies in France. The Hedgehog goes heavier on the whimsy, but concludes with a capricious melodramatic twist. When a movie's 11-year-old narrator begins by announcing that she'll commit suicide on her 12th birthday, either melodrama or whimsy will ensue.

Reviews elegance of the hedgehog