Ma Vie de Courgette
Céline’s
Role: Screenwriter (adapted from the book Autobiographie
d'une Courgette by Gilles Paris)
English
Titles
My Life as a Courgette and My Life as a Zucchini (USA)
Year
2016
Director
Claude
Baras
Screenwriters
Céline
Sciamma (screenwriter)
With contributing writers: Germano Zullo, Claude
Barras, & Morgan Navarro.
Screenplay based on the book by Gilles Paris.
Form
Animated
feature film. 64mins (French & English)
Synopsis
Courgette is an intriguing nickname for a
9-year-old boy. Although his unique story is surprisingly universal. After his
mother’s sudden death, Courgette is befriended by a kind police officer,
Raymond, who accompanies Courgette to his new foster home filled with other
orphans his age. Courgette struggles at first to find his place in this
strange, at times hostile, environment. Yet with Raymond’s help and his
newfound friends, Courgette eventually learns to trust, find true love and at last
a new family of his own.
Trailer
https://youtu.be/4d9N5Y_sN8Q
Available
at
https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/My_Life_as_a_Zucchini?id=UWAGwvuOc14
Honours/Awards
- Winner, César Award for Best Animated Feature (France 2017)
- Winner, César Award for Best Adapted Screenplay: Céline Sciamma (France 2017)
- Winner, Lumières Award for Best Screenplay, Céline Sciamma, France 2017
- Winner, Lumières Award for Best Animated Film, France 2017
- Winner, Best European Animated Film, European Film Awards (EFA) (Germany, 2016)
- Winner, Cristal du long-métrage, Annecy International Animation Film Festival (France, 2016)
- Winner, "Mr. M" Audience Award to the Best Feature Film, Animafest Zagreb (Croatia, 2017)
- Winner, Audience Award - Award to The European Film, San Sebastian International Film Festival (Spain, 2016)
- Winner, Audience Award, Warsaw Film
Festival (Poland,
2016)
- Notably Entry, TAAF (Japan, 2017)
- Nominated, Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, USA 2017
- Nominated, Caméra d'Or, Cannes Film Festival, Claude Barras (France 2016)
- Nominated, Annie Award Outstanding Achievement, Writing in an Animated Feature Production, Céline Sciamma
- Nominated, Annie Award Outstanding Achievement, Directing in an Animated Feature Production, Claude Barras
- Nominated, Annie Award Best Animated Feature — Independent
It was also screened at MANY film
festivals.
Excerpts
from Reviews
99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
“Director Céline Sciamma has already
demonstrated keen insights into what it means to be young and French
in Water Lilies (2007), Tomboy (2011) and Girlhood (2014),
as well as in her screenplay for André Téchiné's Being 17 (2016).
But as screenwriter she proves even sharper in this animated adaptation of
Gilles Paris’ 2002 novel, Autobiographie d'une Courgette,
which marks Swiss director Claude Barras’ transition from acclaimed shorts like The
Genie In A Ravioli Can (2006).
…
Refusing to sentimentalise the plight of the
seven youngsters residing at Les Fontaines, Barras and Sciamma ensure that each
has an unflinchingly authentic backstory that makes their bond all the more
plausible and poignant.
The only downside to this charming and
disarmingly thought-provoking gem is that it lasts a mere 66 minutes. Few would
complain if a sequel came along.”
Empire
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/life-courgette-review/
“Leave
it to a French-language stop-motion film to cut closer to the reality of the
orphan experience than Annie, Matilda or any number of like-minded
live-action melodramas have over the years — assuming, of course, you can
get past the whimsical fact that its parentless wretch sports blue hair and a
potato-shaped noggin. Adapted from the Gilles Paris YA novel by France’s most
youth-savvy screenwriter, Celine Sciamma (Tomboy, Girlhood),
Swiss director Claude Barras’ My Life as a Zucchini tells a simple story
simply, drawing its power from point of view, as a troubled 9-year-old recounts
his stint in a group home following the death of his alcoholic mother.
…
True to the children’s novel that inspired it, Sciamma’s screenplay
takes its naive young protagonist’s view of the world, repeatedly
introducing tough concepts in understated ways, as when father-figure cop
Raymond delicately probes for details on Courgette’s family situation without
exposing his deepest fear — namely that the boy inadvertently killed his
mom trying to protect himself during one of her drunken rages. Now, remanded to
the Fontaines group home, his only souvenir of her is an empty beer can."
Variety
https://variety.com/2016/film/reviews/my-life-as-a-courgette-review-1201766688/
“My Life As a Courgette (or My
Life As a Zucchini in the US), a wonderfully
affecting French-Swiss stop-motion masterpiece based on Gilles Paris’s book Autobiographie
d’une Courgette. Directed by feature first-timer Claude Barras from a
screenplay by Girlhood writer-director Céline Sciamma,
this tale of resilient children surviving abuse and abandonment may sound tough
and unpalatable. Yet despite the spectre of parental alcoholism, drug addiction
and worse, this beautifully tender and empathetic film addresses kids and
adults alike in clear and compassionate tones that span – and perhaps heal –
generations.
…
Sciamma’s screenplay combines revealingly frank and poignant observations about
disrupted lives with laugh-out-loud discussions of sex (“my parents had films…
the man’s willy explodes”) and moments of tenderness made all the more powerful
by their understatement. A scene in which the kids dance beneath a glitterball
to Eisbär by Swiss band Grauzone is as vibrant and invigorating as the Diamonds
sequence from Girlhood, a moment of pure
character-building musical delight. Subtly subversive, too, that the narrative
should celebrate social workers and lend sympathetic voice to a policeman, all
of whom are portrayed in an unfashionably nurturing light.
Sciamma cites the Dardenne brothers as influential, while Barras acknowledges sources ranging from Bambi to The 400 Blows. I thought I spotted a sly nod to Miyazaki in the graffiti on the wall of the children’s home, and even a hallucinogenic flash of Dougal and the Blue Cat in a ghost train ride during a fairground outing. Whatever the sources, the end result is wholly remarkable, whether in subtitled French or the English-dubbed version. I watched both, and while the former seemed marginally more melancholic, the latter still moved me to tears, buoyed up by Sophie Hunger’s plaintive music that perfectly accompanies the lyrical humanism of this lovely movie.”
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jun/04/my-life-as-courgette-review
“Such
is the deft brilliance of director Claude Barras’ understated
heartbreaker. The restraint and care with which Barras and screenwriter
Céline Sciamma tell their drama denotes great respect for their young
characters and their young audience. In their snowy chat, Zucchini reveals
to Camille with self-reflection beyond his years that had his mother lived, he
likely would have spent his adult days drinking beer with her. “I’m quite happy
to know it will never happen,” says the nine-year-old, and the insight does not
seem out of place since the film has taken its characters on their
own terms from the beginning.
An accomplished director herself, Sciamma
(adapting a novel by Gilles Paris) demonstrates a rare talent for treating
young characters as fully formed humans with hopes and desires. This was
particularly true of her second feature, Tomboy, a story about a
girl who convinces her classmates she is a boy, which Sciamma told with
equal parts humor and nuance."
Indiewire
https://www.indiewire.com/2017/02/my-life-as-a-zucchini-review-best-animated-feature-1201786230/
Notes
This
touching film is a French/Swiss co-production feature stop motion film. It has
been universally acclaimed. In it Céline continues her exploration of growing
up and, again, demonstrates her genius in representing the world from the point
of a young person.
The
“making of” featurette (which is also on the DVD) is worth viewing. Stop motion
is amazingly time consuming and fiddly, and in this film the weird looking characters
show such a range of emotions that defy the medium—they quickly engage you in
their complicated lives.
Selecting Céline as screenwriter
“The producers suggested to Claude
Barras the name of Céline Sciamma to collaborate in the writing
of the scenario. This idea was greeted with enthusiasm by the director. "Céline
knew how to give the screenplay a real structure, very classic and rigorously
articulated. She also knew how to balance the subtle balance between humour and
emotion, adventure and social realism," he says. "The
success of this screenplay also depends a lot on the very delicate treatment of
its characters, subtly evoking the darkness of the past to better chase them
away in the light of the budding friendships in the present".
https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-236415/secrets-tournage
From the film’s Press Kit
Screenwriter’s Statement- Céline
Sciamma
You need to be bold
“It didn’t take much for me to commit to the adventure of My Life as
a Courgette: just the outline of a character, sketched by Claude Barras.
The sensitivity of his features, this unique visual signature, which not only
reflected a love for a character, but made me fall in love with the character
as well. After jumping into the project, I was completely caught up and moved
by the problems and sincerity of these little characters. An animated film
steadfastly committed to the realism and accuracy of the story it is telling,
all the while striving for visual poetry, is singular enough to be
irresistible. Writing the screenplay was a moment of freedom and trust. It is
very rare to encounter a project which has the strength of the obvious. There’s
a form of boldness and simplicity in Courgette that won me over. For
simplicity is essential not to succumb to the sirens’ call of excess, or the
temptation of playing god and creating one’s own little world. And it takes
guts and daring to convince yourself that the story of a little boy who kills
his alcoholic mother and so ends up in an orphanage is the perfect pitch for a
children’s film. And yet, when you think of the children’s tales that have been
handed down to us through the ages, they often have very dark premises, such as
Little Thumbling, or Hansel & Gretel… Fairy tales are cruel, My Life as
a Courgette isn’t. The project has the strength and tenderness of a coming of
age story, committed to reflecting a world that already exists, our world,
which is that of the children whom this film aims to speak to.”
THE SCREENPLAY (Claude Barras)
“Due to its at times explicit descriptions of
the violence that the children are subjected to, the book, Autobiography of
a Courgette, is for the most part targeted for young adults and parents. In
adapting the story for an animated film, I wanted to expand the audience to
include younger children.
After an initial, rather long stage of
writing and paring down the story, my producers proposed that I work with
Céline Sciamma. I was, naturally, very enthusiastic straight away. I had seen Tomboy
a few months before and loved the film. So we met on a regular basis to
exchange our ideas and very quickly, avoiding the pitfall of relating the story
in diary form that seemed at first obvious for an adaptation, Céline knew how to
give the screenplay a truly classic and strictly set structure, as well as how
to strike the right balance between humor and emotion, adventure and social
realism. The screenplay’s success is also due to the very delicate handling of
its characters, which subtly evokes dark, tragic past incidents to better
exorcise them in light of budding friendships in the present.”
Articles worth reading
- How I wrote My Life as a Courgette, by Céline Sciamma
Little White Lies
https://lwlies.com/articles/my-life-as-a-courgette-celine-sciamma-writing-process/
- Interview: Céline Sciamma on How My Life as a Zucchini Breaks Your Heart and Takes Children Seriously
The Mary Sue
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