Josiane Balasko as "The Hedgehog"
“THE HEDGEHOG” My rating: A- (Opening Sept. 23 at the Tivoli)
100 minutes | No MPAA rating
Paloma (Gerance Le Guillermic) lives in a big apartment in Paris with her wealthy family. Dad is a mucky-muck in the government. Mom is a neurotic beauty who talks to her houseplants. Her big sister is a spoiled college girl.
As Paloma tells us early on (talking directly into the video camera she lugs everywhere), she has no intention of inheriting her clan’s life of emotionally vacant dissipation.
And so she’s decided that in six months, on her 12th birthday, she’s going to commit suicide. In the meantime she’s making a video to leave behind as her legacy…and as an explanation.
Early on in “The Hedgehog,” Mona Anache’s first feature, I feared the worst.
Paloma is the sort of precocious “old soul” child one only meets in literature or the movies. In other words, she’s not quite real.
Gerance Le Guillermic
Happily, the film isn’t really about Paloma, whose true role is that of observer. The heart of Adache’s screenplay (based on Muriel Barbery’s novel) is the apartment building’s concierege, Madam Michel (Josiane Balasko), who lives on the first floor and spends her days sweeping, scrubbing and being overlooked by the hoity toity residents.
The sour, unsmiling Mme. Michel is a glum, resigned drudge who describes herself as “short, ugly and overweight.” And that’s certainly the unglamorous face she presents to the world.
But this fiftysomething widow is a literary adventurer. In a back room she maintains a library stacked from floor to ceiling with classic and modern literature. To the tenants who don’t even know her first name — it’s Renée — she may be a cipher doing menial work. But in her books Renée escapes into a world of ideas, excitement and beauty.
She is a “hedgehog,” prickly on the outside, but holding tremendous potential for warmth and love.
And when a rich Japanese widower (the elegantly dignified Togo Igawa) moves into the building and recognizes a fellow bookaholic, a lovely little cross cultural relationship blossoms over Anna Karenina and the films of Ozu. Little by little, Renée slowly breaks out of her shell.
Togo Igawa
Of course, it’s all caught on tape by Paloma, who seems to be everywhere.
In telling its story of a woman coming to life after years in limbo, “The Hedgehog” borrows both from fairy tales and romance fiction. But it achieves its own special style thanks to the astonishing performance of Balasko.
A film actress since the early ‘70s, Balasko is also a screenwriter and director (often of comedies). Perhaps her work on both sides of the camera has taught her how to do so much with so little. There’s an economy of expression and gesture in this performance that has the effect of magnifying Renée’s inner thoughts.
The results are heartbreaking and deeply satisfying. Too bad the Oscars so rarely consider actors in foreign language films. This is one of the year’s finest performances.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 
Thank goodness you are still with us, reviewing and writing, Bob. There is no way I would have even heard of this film, much less put it at the top of my list of must-sees. Thanks!
Movie lovers could not do without you, sport.
Love that logo on top and thought the revierw of Hedgehog was insightful.
Can we really find time for this film, Senna and The Tree all in one weekend?
I wish it would rain. Thanks, Bob for creating such problems.
Hi Robert! Yes, I echo the reply of Bob Inderman…completely!!! Thanks!
Movie lovers could not do without your excellent reviews!!
Sincerely,
Jan Manco
Robert Butler—you are the best!
This seems to be that rare event, a film as complex as the book on which it is based.
This is one I will see, and I’m very picky.
Thank you Mr. Butler for your excellent blog.
AJ Daw
From The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
12 year old Paloma is having breakfast and looking at the bouquet on the kitchen counter.
“I don’t believe I was thinking about anything. And that could be why I noticed the movement….
I was alone, and calm, and empty. So I was able to take it in.”
“There was a little sound, a sort of quivering in the air that went, “shhhh” very very very quietly: a tiny rosebud on a little broken stem that dropped onto the counter. The moment it touched the surface it went “puff”, a “puff” of the ultrasonic variety.”
“I understood when I went over and looked at the motionless rosebud where it had fallen. It’s something to do with time, not space.”
“In the split second while I saw the stem and the bud drop to the counter I intuited the essence of Beauty….Because beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you see both their beauty and their death.”
“Oh my gosh, I thought, does this mean that this is how we must live our lives? Constantly poised between beauty and death, between movement and its disappearance?”
“Maybe that’s what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying.”