Directed by Mona Achache
This slightly under-the-radar French drama creeps up on you, building to a powerful and unexpected climax. Initially I resisted its charms, finding neither of its main characters credible. The first is an 11 year old girl, Paloma, a melancholy loaner whose disdain for her well off family and middle class life in general informs a decision to kill herself on the day of her 12th birthday. In the remaining days left her Paloma films a kind of video essay suicide note in which she catalogues the hypocrisies and foibles of those in the apartment building where she lives, using the metaphor of 'a fish in a bowl' to explain her revulsion toward the regimentation of bourgeois existence.
The film's title character is the building's janitor. Renee is a widow in her mid 50s whose unkempt look and gruff exterior hide a bookish nature and self taught appreciation of culture. Publicly playing the role expected of her by the apartment's wealthy clientele in the belief that "no one wants a pretentious concierge", she is a gem in the rough.
The lives of both females are altered when a new tenant moves into the building. Kakuro Ozu, a rich Japanese widower, sees past their defences, sensing the potential in each. He befriends the girl and begins a very careful courtship of Renee.
The longer "The Hedgehog" goes on the more rounded and believable the characters become. Paloma's precocity and improbable insight into the human condition might be of Orson Welles genius proportions, but as written and directed by Mona Achache and played by Garance Le Guillermic she's a long way from the kind of wise cracking kids of American sitcoms. Likewise the heavy set Josiane Balasko avoids all the "Shirley Valentine" type cliches; each time her Renee appears on screen she gets closer to a kind of truth rare in cinema, no matter what its national origin.
Achache makes some obvious points about class relations in France. Her main concerns are deeper though. "The Hedgehog" succeeds as a character study, convincingly giving insight into the psychology of its unhappy principals. The connection forged between them also serves as a means to explore what gives life - and death - meaning and significance. Without too much of the pretension of the type that Renee fears the grand and ultimate mysteries are examined in an entertaining and satisfying mann