My life as a Zucchini (Claude Barras, 2016): Switzerland, France

Reviewed by Laurine Lambert. Viewed at the Lobero Theatre, Santa Barbara Film Festival, 2017.

My life as a Zucchini is an animated feature film Oscar nominee 2017. It is a 2016 French-Swiss film, also known as Ma vie de Courgette, directed by Claude Barras. It was also nominated as animated best feature film at the 89th academy awards. This is a delightful, funny and uplifting film with excellent animation. The characters are endearing, believable and almost humanlike.

It tells the story about the little boy with his blue hair named ”Courgette”. His alcoholic mother dies, and he is taken to a foster home. The kind police man helps him out. He finds it hard to know that his mother is dead, and he is struggling a lot in the foster home. The boy with the red hair (Simon) picks on him in the beginning, because he is the one that knows everything about this orphanage, and all the stories of the other kids. Courgette finds it hard to deal with Simon, eventually they try to respect each other, because they know they are together in this place with kind of the same story. Courgette makes friends in the foster home, and the kind police man still comes to visit him a lot, and supports him. One day a girl is coming in the foster home. Courgette has a crush on her, they will make a new friendship. Not just the two of them, but the entire foster home is friends with each other.

Every character in this movie has their own story. All of them are stuck in the foster home. They may have the saddest stories, but they try to make the best out of it, and enjoy their time with all the new friends they make in the orphanage. These kids in this movie have a lot of traumatic memories and abuse, some of them still have scars on their faces. The succesful animations of how they make this little kids look, with big faces, big eyes and bright colors. Enjoy this beautiful, creative, warm family film.

 

 

 

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Published:
02.12.17 / 12pm
Category:
Animation, Films, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2017