'The Hedgehog' elegant in its message
<b>Reel Life review: 'The Hedgehog'</b>
Mona Achache's first feature "The Hedgehog" - based on Muriel Barbery's best-seller "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" - does a mostly effective job of taking a suicidal preteen story and creating a muted, life-affirming lesson from it.
Eleven-year-old Paris resident Paloma (a radiant Garance Le Guillermic with yellow curls) plans to kill herself on her 12th birthday, 165 days away, so she won't wind up like a pathetic fish in a bowl, being watched for the rest of her life.
She carefully documents the hypocrisies and ridiculousness of the middle-class adults around her with a vintage Hi-8 video camera (the only one in the world that shoots grainy celluloid images in widescreen). She uses the camera to keep the world at bay as much as record it.
The title actually refers to the janitor at Paloma's apartment building, Renee (Josiane Balasko in a beautifully nuanced performance), whom Paloma describes as prickly on the outside, soft on the inside.
Frumpy Renee lives a lonely, unkempt existence, highlighted only by the secret library of books she hides inside a closet of her tiny dwelling space. She reads Tolstoy (her cat is named Leo), watches foreign films and has the curiosity of a writer.
Life for Paloma and Renee changes upon the arrival of a new tenant, the charming and educated widower Kakura Ozu (Togo Igawa) who speaks fluent French and instantly realizes Renee is far more than a mere janitor. He asks her out.
That Ozu finds Renee so attractive is one of the many whimsical mysteries in "The Hedgehog."
Paloma not only has the soul of a documentary maker, she has the sketching skills of an artist and the intellect of a MENSA student. Yet, she's apparently so unappreciated that crushing up pills to take on her 12th birthday seems reasonable?
Finding the proper tone for an upbeat movie about potential child suicide is a tough order, and first-time director Achache cracks the puzzle most of the time.
If a downer event in the third act feels predicated and pat, that's OK. Le Guillermic and Achache have plenty of lighter moments to fall back on in a movie that doesn't really take its dark premise all that seriously in the first place.
"The Hedgehog" opens at the Century Centre in Chicago and the Renaissance Place in Highland Park. Not rated. 100 minutes. ★ ★ ★
<b>Patty, Part 2</b>
Before conquering television with her popular comedy series "The Patty Duke Show," Patty Duke won the Oscar at 16 for playing Helen Keller in the movie "The Miracle Worker," which also won the Oscar for Anne Bancroft as her teacher, Anne Sullivan.
Duke will be appearing Sunday, Sept. 18, at the Arcada Theatre, 105 E. Main St., St. Charles, to raise funds for the Open Door Clinic, an AIDS and STD clinic in Elgin and Aurora.
After a 2 p.m. screening of "The Miracle Worker," Duke will join me onstage for a Q&A session when she will talk about her career, her bipolar disorder and her campaign to promote mental health education. Go to oshows.com for tickets or call (630) 962-7000.
During a recent telephone interview, I asked Duke if she hadn't become an actress, what were her other options? (I shared with you part 1 of my interview last week. See related articles if you missed the first part.)
"The people who raised me, my managers, used to say that if I wasn't in show business, I would be a hooker or a nun," Duke said. "I don't think I would have been a hooker. I might have thought about being a nun, but I don't think so.
"It's hard to tell because my career started at the age of 7. When my career started, my dreams about what I wanted to be stopped. What I did was work. That's what I did. I worked!
"There was no time for what I considered to be a decent education. There was no time allotted for a social life. There was only work. Why bother wondering what I could be when I already knew what I was?"
What do you think about government cutbacks on mental health programs?
"They seem to be the first things to go when there are cutbacks," Duke said. "I believe, as I have experienced, that funding mental health care and rehabilitation centers is cost-effective.
"When someone is treated for mental illness, they stop being a drain on the system. Theoretically, they get a job and pay taxes. That's my argument for not cutting those programs first."
What makes us great as Americans?
"We live by the golden rule because we believe it," she said. "I'm going to do my best to do to others how I would like them to do to me. I don't always succeed, but I try."
You've been married now for 25 years, after a couple of trips to the altar. What turned out to be the secret?
"Because of my diagnosis and treatment, I became marriage material," she said. "Prior to that, I wasn't fit for the job. Marriage works for us because we really enjoy each other. My husband has decided it's his job in life to make me laugh. And he does a really good job of it."
Next week, Patty Duke talks to me about the most powerful force in the universe, and her obsession with death as a child.
<b>United film fest starts</b>
The third annual Chicago United Film Festival begins today at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave., Chicago. Go to the unitedfest.com or musicboxtheatre.com for details. The festival runs through Sept. 15.
<i> Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire's column runs Fridays in Time out!</i>