A Cat in Paris (2010)
"Une vie de chat" (original title)

In Paris, a cat who lives a secret life as a cat burglar's aide must come to the rescue of Zoe, the little girl he lives with, after she falls into a gangster's clutches.

Directors:

Jean-Loup Felicioli, Alain Gagnol

Writers:

Alain Gagnol (dialogue), Alain Gagnol (screenplay),

Stars:

Dominique Blanc, Bernadette Lafont, Bruno Salomone

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 1 win & 4 nominations.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Dominique Blanc	...	Jeanne (voice)
Bernadette Lafont	...	Claudine (voice)
Bruno Salomone	...	Nico (voice)
Jean Benguigui	...	Victor Costa (voice)
Oriane Zani	...	Zoé (voice)
Bernard Bouillon	...	Lucas (voice)
Jacques Ramade	...	Monsieur Bébé (voice)
Jean-Pierre Yvars	...	Monsieur Hulot (voice)
Patrick Ridremont	...	Monsieur Grenouille (voice)
Patrick Descamps	...	Monsieur Patate (voice)
Yves Barbaut	...	Garde 1 / Gardien Zoo
Line Wible	...	Vieille Dame
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Eric Bauza	...	Additional Voices (voice)
JB Blanc	...	Victor Costa (voice)
Steve Blum	...	Nico (voice)

Storyline

Dino is a cat that leads a double life. By day, he lives with Zoe, a little girl whose mother, Jeanne, is a police officer. By night, he works with Nico, a burglar with a big heart. Zoe has plunged herself into silence following her father's murder at the hands of gangster Costa. One day, Dino the cat brings Zoe a very valuable bracelet. Lucas, Jeanne's second-in-command, notices this bracelet is part of a jewelery collection that has been stolen. One night, Zoe decides to follow Dino. On the way, she overhears some gangsters and discovers that her nanny is part of the gangsters' team.

---

Plot Keywords:

policewoman | animal in title | mute girl | notre dame cathedral | walking on a roof | 

---

Taglines:

By Day Child's Pet, By Night Dangerous Thief.

---

Genres:

Animation | Adventure | Crime | Family

---

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG for mild violence and action, and some thematic material

Details

Official Sites:

Folimage [fr] Official Facebook [us]

Country:

France Netherlands Switzerland Belgium

Language:

French

Release Date:

15 December 2010 (France)

Also Known As:

A Cat in Paris

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$34,554 (USA) (1 June 2012)

Gross:

$287,709 (USA) (10 August 2012)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Folimage, Digit Anima, France 3 Cinéma

Technical Specs

Runtime:

70 min

Sound Mix:

DTS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This film was one of a number of movies that were in competition at the 2012 Academy Awards that was related to France and French culture in some way. The films included The Artist, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, The Adventures of Tintin, Puss in Boots from the French fairy-tale by Charles Perrault, Rise of the Planet of the Apes based on the novel by Pierre Boulle and A Cat in Paris. Interestingly though, there was no French film nominated for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award (Oscar) in 2012.

---

Connections

Referenced in Estrenos Críticos: La Cosa (2011)

User Reviews

Sur les Toits de Paris

I thoroughly enjoyed this film: in one sense it's an animated spoof of a classic thriller genre, in another it's a charming entertainment -- and it contains a very well observed cat! Like the B-movies to which it nods, it packs a vast amount of action into its 65-minute running time, leavening action with humour (the splatted dog is a classic cartoon gag -- but it's a tribute to the emotional realism of the film that later on the audience was actually worried that it had come to serious harm) and parody with genuine feeling: the gangsters discussing food are a homage to Quentin Tarantino, but the bereaved Jeanne's battles with the cartoon-Costa of her imagination put a quiver in my stiff upper lip. And the clambering up and down the face of Notre-Dame is a pure paean to Paris... and to the Hunchback!

There are two apparently separate stories going at the start: the little girl with a workaholic single mother, plus the night-time adventures of her cat. But neither of them is quite what it seems -- the neglectful mother in particular is a much more sympathetic character than we initially assume -- and both strands rapidly intertwine with a gangster thriller plot. This may be an animated adventure, but it has more than enough depth for adults as well as children: in fact, I suspect the tension may be a little too much for small children. One little boy in the row in front of me had to be carried out howling that he wanted to go home.

The style of animation is -- deliberately -- extremely crude: characters are drawn in the simplest of outlines, although I noticed that the cat movement and postures, for all the crudity of the shapes, were extremely well done. (Take the scene, for example, when the cat is sprawled in Nico's room -- or when it disdainfully opens just one slit of an eye as Claudine rages at it!) And almost all the action takes place at night or by artificial lighting, heightening the child's storybook appearance of the art. This is clearly a consciously retro aesthetic: I was amused to note that the brand of paper used in making all the drawings got its own entry in the credit listing at the end of the film.

What really grated on me, for some reason, was the depiction of the feet (I had the same problem with DreamWorks' Sinbad animation). The characters in this film have incredibly tiny triangular feet which seem always to be drawn from the same angle no matter which way the rest of the body is pointing, and I found it visually disturbing to have the perspective so obviously all wrong...

A bonus feature was the fluent idiomatic English translation in the subtitles, at least in the London Film Festival version: it makes a welcome change from translations obviously aimed at the American market. (And it's always fun to back-translate the insults: within the limits of my vocabulary of French vituperation, some pretty apt equivalents seemed to have been chosen!)

I'm tempted to rate this at 9 out of ten, but I don't think it has quite enough depth for that level: I'll compromise and knock a point off for the annoyance of the feet, leaving it at a very solid 8.