Le Petit poucet (2001)
Directed by Olivier Dahan

Film Review

It's quite a switch from hard-edged, ultra-violent post-noir thriller to whimsical children's fairytale, but director Olivier Dahan appears not to have been daunted by this challenge, although his adaptation of Charles Perrault's Tom Thumb is obviously cut from the same gore-saturated cloth as Dahan's previous Déjà mort (1998), minus some of that film's bloodier excesses.   Dahan's main strength as a director is his extremely well-developed visual imagination, which serves him in good stead in this, his most flamboyant film to date.  Le Petit poucet is far from being a masterpiece - at times it looks like something Tim Burton may have knocked out in a deranged drunken stupor - but it is a distinctive, visually striking piece of film art that is just about held together by its own eccentric poetry.

Dahan may be a titan on the design front but he is far less successful as a director of actors, and it is this that makes Le Petit poucet painful viewing for anyone expecting a serious piece of drama with convincing characters and a coherent narrative.  Despite the liberal smattering of high calibre actors in supporting roles (Romane Bohringer, Élodie Bouchez, Catherine Deneuve and Romain Duris all put in a brief appearance), the performances are generally below par (occasionally terrible) and cause you to wish that Dahan had gone the whole hog and opted for animation rather than live action.  It is also unclear who the film's target audience is supposed to be.  The naivety of the script and direction would suggest that the film is aimed at a pre-school child audience, but most responsible parents would think twice about subjecting their impressionable toddlers to the film's grim excursions into adult violence.  And this is the central, irredeemable flaw of Le Petit poucet - it is too self-consciously childish to appeal to adults, and yet too casually 'grown-up' to be suitable entertainment for young children.

Film Synopsis

Once upon a time, in a far off land, there was a little boy named Tom Thumb.  He lived on a farm with his parents and many brothers, all of whom despised him because he was so small and puny.   Times were hard and, during a long war, the farm was raided by soldiers, who took all they could find, leaving Tom's family even more poor and desolate than before.  Realising that they all faced starvation, Tom's parents took their children into the forest one day, and abandoned them there.  The children not only had marauding wolves to be afraid of, but also the warriors of a fearsome soldier with an iron leg.  But the greatest of all their fears was the child-eating Ogre...