The Hedgehog

The Hedgehog is very French--it's very angsty and existential, full of ennui. All of the French things stuck together.

An 11-year-old girl, 150 odd-days away from turning 12, decides that on her 12th birthday she will kill herself in order to avoid the fish-bowl life that she sees as inevitable, given her upper class family: for instance, her mother is on champagne and anti-depressants and talks to plants. Until then, Paloma (the precocious 11-year-old girl) is filming a movie, her masterpiece. She films her family and her neighbors--there's the superintendent of the building (something like a janitor), an unattractive widow with a secret room full of books, and there's the chic Japanese man who moves in upstairs. The three of them become friends and the friendship and love changes all of their lives.

The movie is quite unusual from an American perspective--it's both much happier and much more shocking than most movies. Paloma is charming: she's artistic and full of life and insight. It is she who calls the superintendent a hedgehog: "She’s prickly on the outside, a real fortress, but I feel that on the inside, she’s as refined as that falsely lethargic, staunchly private, and terribly elegant creature."

The film is all about hiding and revealing--both Paloma and the superintendent are always looking to hide, the superintendent in her secret room and in her dowdy appearance. Death is the ultimate hiding place for Paloma. In the course of the film, they both learn that life is about being open.


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