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Mood:
- ContemplativeBittersweetSentimental
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Plot:
- AgingCaptivityAnimal lifeConfinedSocietyElderly
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Genres:
- ForeignDocumentary
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Time/Period:
- Contemporary21st Century
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Place:
- EuropeFranceParis
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Attitudes:
- SeriousRealistic
Does this gene fit Nénette?
Nénette, 2010
French
France
Profile of Nénette
The mood of Nénette is bittersweet, contemplative, and sentimental. The plot centers around aging, captivity, and animal life. It is a foreign and documentary movie. In approach, Nénette is serious and realistic. The setting is Paris. It happens in contemporary times.
Summary of Nénette
After three husbands and four kids, 40-year-old Nénette is settling into retirement quietly, spending much of her time staring out the window. On the other side of the glass, zookeepers and visitors regularly observe and comment on her appearance and behavior. They watch her; she watches them. A gentle redhead with black fingernails, saggy breasts and soulful eyes, Nénette is an orangutan, who has resided at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris since 1972. But documentarian Nicolas Philibert isn’t interested in anthropomorphizing his hairy subject. In the unadorned cinema verité style of his previous films, such as the masterful To Be and to Have (2002), Philibert remains intent simply on observing and listening to Nénette and the microcosmic world on either side of her viewing window. For a brief moment, the reflection of some inquisitive child visitors can be seen in the glass, but for the most part it is just Nénette, and every so often her roommate and son Tübo, who occupy the frame. Visitors comment in various languages on her size, her hair, the amount of space she occupies. They wonder aloud if she misses her Borneo homeland and what she might be thinking. Is she sad? Lonely? Bored? Two of her keepers, one who has been with her for 35 years, provide gentle off-screen insights into her life, her history, her personality and their personal bonds with the inscrutable primate. Ultimately, you will forge your own connection with Nénette and may start to wonder who is really observing who.
Details
| Language: | French |
| Country: | France |
| Release date: | 30 April 2010 |
| Runtime: | 70 min |
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