A Velha Senhora e os Pombos

After "Tripplets of Bellvile" (which is my favorite animated movie of all time) I was hungry for more of Sylvian Chomet unique world...

Thankfully I've soon found "The Old lady and the pigeons"! A movie set in the same universe and with the same charm and grotesque of the "Tripplets". Its short but but it will make you want watch it over and over again (over and over) Its very hard to describe this story without ruining for you as all of movie elements connect together in a wonderful way and story is building in a very oryginal way you never seen beafore. In fact this movie has "oryginal" written all over. Just trust me when I say - if you enjoy Tripplets or have a dark sense of humor you will enjoy this one very much!

WHY THEY Don't MAKE MORE MOVIES LIKE THIS is a riddle to me...

This wonderfully dotty short film from the creator of Belleville Rendez-vous, Sylvain Chomet, really is fantastic. It has an original storyline - a starving gendarme, some greedy fat pigeons, a pigeon-obsessed lady, and some wild dancing.

The animation puts its grotesque characters (which put me in mind of the drawings of Gerald Scarfe) into a world all of their own, where the gendarme fantasises about food, is irritated by pigeons, and eventually dresses up as one of the birds himself to continually visit the old lady for slap-up meals.

'The Old Lady and the Pigeons' is the epitome of bad taste cartoons, a darkly fun half-hour in the company of skewed figures and warped minds.

I'm not sure why, but this short piece was powerful enough to resonate with me on so many levels. It must have been the hungry gendarme, who so desperately was in need to get feed. The story line is something more or less grotesque in nature but what touched me the most in this "weirdly appealing" film was the character development. From the first moment the gendarme appears on the tourists' camera shots, you know you want to get to know this strange guy more and more. Well, of course it demands a terrible amount of talent and skill to be able to animate a cartoon character so human-like and impressive but this film seems to be backed up by a group of genius creators. Some scenes and sequences prove the animators have really let their imagination go wild and even though the film's run-time may exceed the normal amount expected from a short piece, you'll enjoy every single frame of it. Those familiar with Chomet and his distinguished style, know that it's really hit or miss with him and as long as you're not looking for vain sentiment in a film, then this piece is definitely for you.

An absolutely splendid French short about a (to say the least) starving gendarme who discovers a lady feeding pigeons in the park and dresses up like a pigeon in a desperate attempt to get food. Strange indeed. Very nicely done, it really captures the atmosphere of Paris. Great animation, odd story, and the fat American tourists are just too damn funny.

"La vieille dame et les pigeons" ("The Old Lady and the Pigeons" in English) offers a comedic look at the lengths to which a person will go for self-preservation, as a malnourished policeman gets into the confidence of an old woman by dressing as a pigeon and getting her to feed him. But it turns out that he's not the only one who has plans in store.

An interesting trick that Sylvain Chomet's Academy Award-nominated short uses is the lack of dialogue except for the beginning and end. The only speech comes from stereotypical tourists from the US (those scenes actually have French subtitles). But the point is that this is a clever animated short. I think that these animated shorts are more interesting than the animated features whose sole selling point is star power. I recommend it.