Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Le Petit Nicolas

Le Petit Nicolas is the star of a series of books written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Jean-Jacques Sempé (perhaps best known to Americans for his covers for The New Yorker) and much loved by the French. The stories are told with warmth and nostalgia for the uncomplicated life of a little boy in France in the 1950s, a world where the principal is someone to fear, one's teacher someone to love, and football, cowboys and Indians, and new bikes and all things "chouette" (cool) are the abiding passions. Nicolas and his buddies, chubby Alceste, spoiled Geoffrey, teacher's pet Agnan, and others get into all types of scrapes but the punishments never last long enough to stop them from having one more adventure. Now Nicolas has made it to the big screen with a live action film that opened in theaters last week. It was the first time I've seen a movie entirely in French (no subtitles, no nothing) and I'm with the reviewers: a sweet diversion for a weekend afternoon. My guess is that U.S. viewers will have to wait for the DVD.

1 comment:

Starman said...

I've read and enjoyed some of the Petit Nocolas stories. I hope the movie manages to maintain the "atmosphere" of the stories.

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