{"id":24552,"date":"2017-03-04T06:06:46","date_gmt":"2017-03-04T11:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=24552"},"modified":"2017-03-04T06:56:35","modified_gmt":"2017-03-04T11:56:35","slug":"ma-vie-de-courgette-my-life-as-a-zucchini-new-york-international-childrens-film-festival-2017-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/04\/ma-vie-de-courgette-my-life-as-a-zucchini-new-york-international-childrens-film-festival-2017-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Ma Vie de Courgette (My Life as a Zucchini) (2017) (New York International Children’s Film Festival 2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Courgette (Zucchini) is a young boy who has had a tough life.\u00a0 His father is gone and his bother drinks a lot of beer.\u00a0 One day, something happens to his mother and he ends up placed in a group home.\u00a0 Through learning to trust others with the other kids in the home, he also learns to love himself and others.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As Courgette goes through life and learns about these things, the viewer is allowed to build emotions with him and get attached to him and the other kids.\u00a0 This is something that is handled incredibly well in the film\u2019s writing by C\u00e9line Sciamma with contributing writers Germano Zullo, Claude Barras, and Morgan Navarro, based on a book by Gilles Paris, the story takes children and makes them fully fleshed human beings with emotions and character arcs more complex than most kids movies\u2019 characters get.\u00a0 Here they have a starting point, they grow emotionally, and have a hope build and continue beyond the end of the film.\u00a0 The characters burrow in the viewer\u2019s heart and soul and will make most people with a heart cry at least a little.<\/p>\n

Director Claude Barras takes this story and brings it to life in stunning stop-motion animation, giving the characters a special life and making them feel real.\u00a0 The way the scenes develop and are shot make it easy to forget that this is animation and even easier to get into this sweet, emotional story.\u00a0 His work along with the cinematography by David Toutevoix create this great visual interest in the story, showing the characters in the right way to give them something to evolve with and to allow them to feel, to just be, as much as animated character can.\u00a0 This sets up the character work by a big, talented crew of animator working under animation director Kim Keukeleire.\u00a0 This crew\u2019s work is magnificent, reminiscent of other stop-motion animation films but also very much its own entity at the same time.\u00a0 The characters move in natural looking ways and shows emotion even through small detailed movements such as eye movements, blinking, hair in the wind, minor head tilts, etc.\u00a0 They also evolve in a beautifully designed and dressed environment.\u00a0 Everything just fits perfectly together.<\/p>\n

Adding to these visuals are the music and the voice work.\u00a0 The music by Sophie Hunger is beautiful and fits just right with each scene, setting the emotional tone for the scenes, supporting the characters and their arcs.\u00a0 Some of the songs are flat out musically beautiful and work on just about every angle they can be taken here.\u00a0 Also working on the audio factor of this movie is the voice work.\u00a0 The version reviewed here is the French language one with a voice cast composed of Gaspard Schlatter as Courgette the lead, Sixtine Murat as Camille his best friend, Paulin Jaccoud as Simon his nemesis, Michel Vuillermoz as Raymond the cop who helps him, etc.\u00a0 Everyone here does a talented interpretation of their character.\u00a0 Schlatter is possibly the one with the most emotional work and evolution here as Courgette and he does fantastic work that needs to be \u201cseen\u201d.\u00a0 Considering the material, especially for the children all having suffered before getting together in the home, subtle, nuanced voice work was needed and it is exactly what is provided here.\u00a0 The adult characters also work great with Michel Vuillermoz as Raymond serving as a sort of anchor along with Adrien Barazzone as Mr. Paul, Monica Budde as Mme Papineau, and V\u00e9ronique Montel as Rosy.\u00a0 This may be a kids\u2019 story, but the adult as just as important as they serve as anchor for the little ones in the story and for the adult viewing public.<\/p>\n

Ma Vie de Courgette is one of those films that grabs you and doesn\u2019t let you go.\u00a0 It gives an inside view of a child\u2019s life in a group home after a traumatic event, giving children in this situation everywhere a voice, a way to make people know how much they need good adults to be there for them and to be their source of stability.\u00a0 The film has a ton of emotions crammed into it and brings them across in the best way possible as it does not shove them down the public\u2019s throat but lets them feel these emotions with the kids figuring out their way through life, through what they lived through while also learning to trust and love again after being thoroughly broken by adults who should have known better.\u00a0 Ma Vie de Courgette is emotional in just the right way and gets its message across without over doing it.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of those films that deserved its Oscar nomination wholeheartedly and should be winning a bunch of awards.\u00a0 It\u2019s beautiful visually, musically, and emotionally.<\/p>\n

PROUDLY CELEBRATING ITS 20TH<\/sup> ANNIVERSARY THIS YEAR, THE NY INT\u2019L CHILDREN\u2019S FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FEBRUARY 24-MARCH 19. TICKETS NOW ON SALE.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courgette (Zucchini) is a young boy who has had a tough life.\u00a0 His father is gone and his bother drinks a lot of beer.\u00a0 One day, something happens to his mother and he ends up placed in a group home.\u00a0 Through learning to trust others with the other kids in the home, he also learns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,99,110,219,225,302,340,367,580],"class_list":["post-24552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-adaptation","tag-animation","tag-art-house","tag-comedy","tag-coming-of-age","tag-drama","tag-family","tag-foreign","tag-kids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24552"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24555,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24552\/revisions\/24555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}