MIFF NOTES: My Life as a Courgette (2016, Dir. Claude Barras)

Want a left-of-centre comparison? In the middle of Claude Barras’ drop-dead-gorgeous, effortlessly-affecting, stop-motion animation gem, My Life as a Courgette, I was suddenly put in mind of Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Odd right? The thing is, along with Barras, Germano Zullo and Morgan Navarro, Céline Sciamma is credited with adaptation here (the adaptation being from Gilles Paris’ novel ‘Autobiographie d'une Courgette’). Along with her own films Water Lillies, Tomboy and Girlhood, Sciamma is (like Pasolini) making a name for herself adding narrative colour to the films of others, two of them in this festival (this and André Téchiné’s Being 17).

Where Pasolini brought the street-lingo cred to the likes of Federico Fellini and Mauro Bolognini, Sciamma is fast becoming the go-to voice for France’s youth, imbuing characters with reality-building honesty and effortlessly espousing their worlds’ diversity, cultural and sexual.

Though it is easily missed, My Life as a Courgette, is a wonderful example of her considerable talent, set within a beautifully realised animated film. It is hard to prise the two elements apart; they both complement each other so firmly. Barras’ team (most notably animation director Kim Keukeleire, art director Ludovic Chemarin and cinematographer David Toutevoix) have created a wonderous world, which contains all the elements of our own but heightens them with lighting, colour and design. Walls are covered in recognisable graffiti, grounds are littered with recognisable rubbish, shirts are covered in recognisable stains. Sciamma deftly matches this with a surprisingly bright take on some pretty depressing issues: child abuse, parricide, drug addiction, bullying, racism. Sex and sexuality also get a refreshing (and very amusing) dose of realism at a level rarely attempted in films for kids, let alone animation.

It may not sound delightful but it is. And that is the beauty of everyone’s work here. My Life as a Courgette is a tight, affecting and altogether delightful animation that will be an under the table education to any child lucky enough to experience it.

Adults, too, of course.

★★★★

Trailer:

My Life as a Courgette screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.