Rating - 1I

Ah the French, how they can be so large and so small at the same time.  No other country achieves such parallelism in its culture.  And the title, which is explained in the movie, and is not here a spoiler, is described as prickly on the outside, but different on this inside - how apt. 

The protagonist is an extremely precocious 11 year old girl, planning to commit suicide on her 12th birthday.  She lives in a luxurious apartment with wealthy parents, who are dysfunctional in rather ordinary ways. In fact, she views death as a way to avoid whatever comes next in her life and although meticulously considered, she is rather casual about her anticipated suicide.  The janitor of the building, which has only 5 similarly luxurious apartments, is an unattractive woman who lives alone.  She is dour, but dutiful to her dweller-clients.  She is polite, and while not exactly unfriendly, neither is she warm.  She is slightly disdainful at the louche life of the people who live in the building, as is the 11 year old. 

Instead of leaving a suicide note, the protagonist uses an old movie camera to record her life or rather the life of those around her.

A widowed Japanese man moves into the building and develops relationships with both the janitor and the 11 year old.  He is very courtly, old world, reserved, and wise.  And this plot devise only works because he is foreign.  It would not work if he were also a Parisian. 

And then there are the cats.  The janitor has a beautiful, albeit lazy tomcat.  The Japanese has a pair of sleek Siamese cats.  The cats become interesting foils to the story.  They metaphorically represent their owners through the occasional interactions with their respective owners. 

The janitor is a secret reader of serious classics.  Her love of Tolstoy is used to connect her to various characters in the film, but is overdone and slightly heavy-handed.  The famous, and now almost trite, first line from Anna Karenina, is used at various points in the movie. 

Although I am not an expert at film technique, I would judge the filming, directing, and editing to be excellent.  The entire movie is filmed inside the apartment building.  The layout of the girl’s apartment, which is three sides around a courtyard, so that she can watch the goings on of her family is clever.  So while, the apartment building might seem confining, there are a lot of shots through the many windows and glass doors of her apartment.  By contrast, the janitor’s apartment seems to have no windows at all. 

This films rates a 1I.  As you may remember, 1 connotes a good film, worth seeing, but not something to rush out to see immediately. The I connotes that it is intellectually interesting rather than simply entertaining (=”E”). 

Finally, this film reminds me of Eric Rohmer, especially Claire’s Knee.  It is delicately done.  The characters strike me as real people, generally getting along as well as they can.  They live day to day, confronting the small exigencies of life as best they can, just like the rest of us.

Kind regards,

Steve

G. Stephen DeCherney, MD, MPH
Clinical Professor of Medicine
Division of Endocrinology
University of North Carolina School of Medicine
Chapel Hill, North Carolina