The Hedgehog
Cast includes: Josiane Balasko (French Twist), Garance Le Guillermic (Déja vu), Togo Igawa (Memoirs of a Geisha)
Director: Mona Achache (Eden Is West)
Genre: Light Drama, based on a novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (2009) French with subtitles
In brief: Paloma is a very precocious 11-year-old, living at 7 Rue de Grenelle on Paris’s left bank with her parents and older sister. She’s already figured out that life is absurd, and she’s documenting that fact by making a video diary. She tells us that she’s not planning to “live her life in a fishbowl.” And when she turns 12… in just 165 days… she’s going to kill herself… leaving behind her video diary to explain everything. Paloma knows she lives a privileged existence, but life is still absurd. Paloma’s mom, for example, has been seeing a shrink and taking antidepressants for 10 years, and she carries on more meaningful conversations with the house plants than with people. The only one in the building who’s at all interesting to Paloma is the janitor, Madame Michel. Paloma secretly calls her the hedgehog… “prickly on the outside but refined on the inside.” It seems that Paloma is the only one who suspects that Madame Michel has any qualities other than prickly.
When the new tenant, Kakuro Ozu overhears Madame Michel say, “All happy families are alike,” he responds, “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This sends Madame Michel to her bookshelves… and indeed, it’s a quote from her favorite book, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Paloma meets Ozu in the elevator and they exchange greetings in Japanese. (Paloma has many talents, indeed.) As Paloma systematically stockpiles her mom’s antidepressants in preparation for her 12th birthday, she laments about the unfairness of getting an interesting new neighbor just weeks before she’s going to kill herself. In the meantime, Ozu attempts to befriend the hedgehog by giving her an early addition of Anna Karenina. Madame Michel is touched but puzzled. Why would he want to befriend a “short, ugly overweight woman with a fat surly cat named Leo with sweaty feet.” Over the next few weeks, Madame Michel begins coming out of her shell as both Ozu and Paloma befriend her. At the same time, we watch Paloma’s countdown to her 12th birthday.
As the relationships among these three characters develops, it’s Paloma’s relationship with herself that keeps us guessing. It’s also Paloma’s amazingly astute observations on life that give this movie its charm. The Elegance of the hedgehog was a very popular book, written in French and translated into over a dozen different languages. It’s a character-driven narrative that tells us you can’t judge a book by its cover… unless, of course, it’s an early edition of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
2 popped kernels
A charming fish-out-of-water story with many astute observations on life
Popcorn Profile
Primary Audience: Grown-ups
Gender Appeal: Any audience
Distribution: Art house
Mood: Upbeat
Tempo: Cruises comfortably
Visual Style: Nicely varnished realism
Character Development: Engaging
Language: True to life
Social Significance: Thought provoking
