A friend called me yesterday to ask if I wanted to go see a film about a little girl who plans to commit suicide - but then "complications ensue". That pretty much sums up the plot of The Hedgehog, and yet not at all. I figured 'why not?', but neither of us knew what we were in for.
The girl at the center of the film, Paloma, is sensitive, wildly creative, secretive, and in matter-of-fact despair over the uselessness of life. She has planned to die on her 12th birthday, and draws a gigantic calendar on her wall to mark off her remaining days, as she hordes pills from her mother's anti-anxiety meds and films everything with her father's old Hi-8 camera. But the film isn't really about her at all - the true center of the story is Reneé Michel, the concierge of the tony 5-apartment building, who goes about her day so unobtrusively as to be almost invisible to all around her, save the requite colorful street character Jean-Pierre, and Paloma. At least until the introduction of the new tenant, Kakuro Ozu, who takes an interest in both Paloma and Mme Michel.
Okay, that sounded creepy. He takes a decidedly non-creepy interest in the two women.
At first I was thinking that Paloma was the anti-Eloise, but she's more akin to a modern Harriet the Spy. A french Harriet the Spy whose grounds start and end with her own building. Garance Le Guillermic is excellent in portraying a precocious girl in full awkward glory without making her too cute/unbearable for words. And Josiane Balasko, as Mme Michel, is just sublime.
It looks like The Hedgehog was a late substitution in the Egyptian's calendar, replacing the film Happy, Happy. This may explain the small audience that was there last night. It is playing through Thursday, Oct 6. GO!
The Hedgehog official site
Landmark Theatres page on The Hedgehog
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