the hedgehog
Original title: Le hérisson
Country: France
Genre: Drama
Last week I watched this amazing production from France. And I was so glad to see that the director of this movie is a woman! So rare!
The story is about Paloma. She's 11 years old and live with her mom, dad and older sister in a big luxury apartment. This is quite an ordinary family, with adults who are always busy and a child who quietly observes their behaviors from a distance.
Paloma is not just an ordinary girl. She's very intellectual and she reflects deeply on what she sees. She find her family to be tragic and she fear most of all to grow up and become just like them. She think the world is very shallow, without beauty, without intellect, and she finds all the adults to be unreal and untrue to themselves and everyone else. This drives Paloma to take a very important decision - she will kill herself on her 12th birthday. It's still 165 days left to her birthday and she use the last days of her life to make a movie.
In the house where Paloma lives there are other apartments as well. On the bottom floor lives the janitor. An old, poor, widow whose passion is chocolate, cats and books. She's not easy to make a connection with because of her hard bitter attitude, but Paloma sees right though the old lady's self defense mechanism. She compares the janitor with a hedgehog with all the sharp spikes on the outside, but a soft inside.
A new person is also moving in, in the building. Kakuro Ozu is a handsome, wealthy, Japanese man whose home has the traditional Japanese interior. Paloma meet him in the elevator and speak a little Japanese with him.
These three persons are the main characters in this movie. They're all so different, but you'll care for them all. I just love how the story develops as these characters gets to know each other.
This movie is so beautiful in so many ways. If you haven't watched it yet, you have really missed out something.
