ORPHAN BLUE
MY LIFE AS A COURGETTE French-Swiss stop-motion charmer for kids of all ages…
Abook aimed at teenagers. A stop-motion animation meant for eight to 12-year-olds. And a release that’s enchanted adults. That’s one way to describe the journey of My Life As A Courgette. Adapted from Gilles Paris’ 2002 novel Autobiographie d’une Courgette, this French-Swiss effort from director Claude Barras has certainly bewitched voters – with Courgette (or Zucchini as the Americans call it) nominated for Best Animated Feature at both the Golden Globes and Oscars.
Holed up in a Paris hotel, during the annual UniFrance event to promote French cinema, Barras is seated next to a multi-jointed model ‘Courgette’, the nine-year-old blue-haired boy at the story’s heart. Designed with a big head and dark-circled wide eyes, like all the kids in the film, this melancholic look is certainly no upbeat Disney rendering. “It’s as if the past and its sadness is weighing on them,” notes Barras. Another thing that separates
Courgette from American animations is its courageous realism. With no father and an alcoholic mother, who nicknamed him after a vegetable, Courgette is forced to head to a foster-home after his mum dies in a freak accident. The kids he meets there all come from tough backgrounds – parents in prison, on drugs, deported or sexually abusive – and they’re all desperate to find love from adoptees. Making his feature debut with
Courgette after a series of shorts, Barras shot the film over eight months, using 10 animators and 15 sets. Having trimmed the book’s 20-odd children down to seven, Barras shaped the script with Céline Sciamma ( Girlhood). “Céline and I love marginals,” he says. “We’re all marginals to a certain extent. And when you’re an outsider, it gives you space to improve. There is space for hope also.”
One of the more emotional moments was screening the film to kids from real-life orphanages. “It was confronting them with their own stories,” he says. Particularly touching was the way the kids wanted to know about the future of the film’s young protagonists. “They needed to find hope for all of the characters. Some children asked ‘Why do parents take drugs?’ They asked these kinds of questions and they were talking about their own stories of course.”
With the English-dubbed version featuring Ellen Page, Nick Offerman and Will Forte, Barras has been taken aback by the response from audiences above and beyond the pre-teen market he initially envisaged. “We reached a lot more people than we’d hoped for, especially since parents and even grandparents went to see the film, even on their own.” The only downside now is the lack of available Courgette merchandise. “We haven’t had the time!” sighs Barras. He
better get prepping…