26/06/26 – 7.30pm The Terry O’Toole Theatre
France 1960
Dir: Louis Malle
Cert 12A
89 mins
Starring: Catherine Demongeot, Philippe Noiret, Hubert Deschamps
The only one of our New Wave classics to be fully in colour, “Zazie dans le métro” certainly leaps off the screen in gaudy exuberance! Zazie is a 10-year-old country girl dumped in Paris with her Uncle Gabriel, while her mother swans off for a romantic tryst with yet another lover. Zazie is fun-loving, charming, precocious, a pain in the neck – take your choice! Perhaps she is all of those things at once. It’s impossible to describe the “plot”. Suffice to say, the film is an anarchic succession of visual gags and slapstick, with the protagonists darting maniacally around Paris. Verbal jokes also abound, with Zazie and others taking wild liberties with the French language. The title of the film, however, is misleading!
Trailer: