My Life As A Courgette/Ma Vie De Courgette - Movie Review - BFI London Film Festival

This French hard hitting stop motion claymation feature is a funny, enlightening, heartwarming/heartbreaking treat for animation lovers. It shows awareness of very intense topics such as child abuse, neglect and holds a great message about what it means to be a family. Courgette is a very peculiar protagonist, since he was named after a vegetable by his alcoholic mother. After her death, he is sent to a foster home for children just like him. This film is about him adapting to his new home and the relationships between him and the other children. When you hear the stories of other children of how they got there, you feel a lot sympathy and shock since some of them are disturbing. The children look cute but also quite “damaged” in their features. You just want to give them a big hug.

Whether this film is suitable for children is questionable though as it contains mild references of alcohol and sex. But it’s all done through the point of children not adults so I guess that’s okay. The kids in the theatre laughed as well as well the adults. This film ended at 66 minutes which is sort of short and I admired that. There was no desperation of filling in a 90 minute runtime as most features length films do. There was no other story to be told and that’s that. Overall, I loved it! It is truly a work of art. This film was everything it needed to be. What a great start to a season of films at the London Film Festival.