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Rating: "La Vielle Dame Et Les Pigeons" is a 1996 short film in the animation genre, created by the cartoonist Sylvain Chomet.
In half an hour, the subtle accusation of the cartoonist against the society "managed" by the powerful comes together. The interpretation takes place through the figure of the pigeon. But let's proceed in order.
An old malnourished ex-gendarme reduced to a state of extreme poverty, envies the crumbs offered by an old lady to fat pigeons. The old lady doesn't spare the offerings on the birds, which gorge themselves on first-class sweets.
The gendarme drags himself into the solitude of his hovel in the evening, and the pigeons on the ledge watch him attentively. Cockroaches stroll across the floor, and the old man feeds on meager scraps. At night, he dreams of stealing the "crumbs" from the pigeons, who indignantly dressed as noblemen peck him until they tear him apart. The agitated awakening pushes him to a spectacular solution: he will become a pigeon to feed on the offerings of the loving old woman. But things will not go exactly as planned.
Essentially, pigeons are an omnipresent figure for the gendarme: in the park, they weave between his legs or poop on his hat. He watches them gorge themselves, and at night they are his nightmare. They watch him, and their shadows project onto the wall of the hovel at night. He contrives to replace them, but....
I see the pigeons as a metaphor for the powerful, who control the poor, feast at their expense, and even "shit" on them. Pigeons in his dream, dressed elegantly and with human likenesses, are indignant as soon as the gendarme nibbles at their crumbs. Pigeons that are, if we want, an example to follow to escape the state of poverty, but demonstrate that a disguise is not enough. Pigeons that have meaning in a group (group as an assembly, symbol of strength), but as soon as one is left alone, it cannot manage and dies.
A well-made short, with amusing details (the pigeons are ridiculously funny), distressing at just the right point and absolutely unsuitable (difficult to understand) for children. A happy and fitting use of colors, for small pleasant and valuable slices of Paris. Fun music, exquisitely suited to the tones of the "cartoon". A brilliant, sharp, alert, and current vision, for a picture painted by an author whom I find fantastic both in the stroke and in the content he can bring out from mere images. The dialogues are, in fact, almost nonexistent. But the message, after a brief reflection, comes through. In the initial part, Chomet highlights a glossy, touristic Paris as a perfect starting point to denounce what an "external" eye does not see.
On the wall of his hovel stands a print depicting a smiling, colorful man saying "La gendarmeria scrive il tuo avvenire". It's pure satire, as the viewer witnesses the opposite situation: a very poor and gaunt man. Essentially, behind this strong contrast lies the description of the false promises of a state, a government (the French one) certainly not shared by the cartoonist, which at the institutional level is as deceitful as it is untrustworthy.
Furthermore, Chomet must hate the Americans. He always depicts them as idiotic obese people: he does it in this work as in the next.
The short won numerous awards and in 1996 it was nominated for an Academy Award.
The Frenchman Chomet is famous for being the author of the brilliant "Les Triplettes de Belleville", (reviewed here on the deb) an animated feature film created in 5 years of personal refinement.
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