The stunning scenery alone set amongst a back drop of the French Alps is worth the price of an admission ticket to Belle and Sebastian. Awesome is an understatement, especially when it's pretty obvious that much of the movie was filmed on location.
But the rest of the production will be pretty useful too in maintaining adult interest in the story. We get a suspenseful WW2 story set in a mountainous French border village, through which Jewish refugees are quietly being sifted through to neutral Switzerland, both annoying and confounding the local occupying German troops. There is also the business of a mysterious "beast", endangering the village's goat herds and sheep flocks. And of course there is 7 year old Sebastian himself and his adopted family, who whilst wandering through the mountains he prefers to school, comes across and later adopts super hound Belle. For good measure there are blizzards, avalanches, a hint of romance and a bit of a twist or two thrown into the mix. It's fair to say, this is not your schmaltzy type family film.
The dog naturally is just eye-catchingly magnificent, with the humans not far behind too. The always versatile Tchéky Karyo makes an excellent craggy grandfather Césa and Félix Bossuet is a very appealing and convincing Sébastien. His scenes with the Pyrenean Mountain Dog playing Belle are an undoubted highlight. BTW, good luck trying to find the name of the dog, without whom, there wouldn't have been much of a movie. He/she oddly doesn't appear to have been judged worthy of being mentioned in the credits, though I certainly appreciated Belle's work, along with that of the production's dog and animal trainers.
But the rest of the production will be pretty useful too in maintaining adult interest in the story. We get a suspenseful WW2 story set in a mountainous French border village, through which Jewish refugees are quietly being sifted through to neutral Switzerland, both annoying and confounding the local occupying German troops. There is also the business of a mysterious "beast", endangering the village's goat herds and sheep flocks. And of course there is 7 year old Sebastian himself and his adopted family, who whilst wandering through the mountains he prefers to school, comes across and later adopts super hound Belle. For good measure there are blizzards, avalanches, a hint of romance and a bit of a twist or two thrown into the mix. It's fair to say, this is not your schmaltzy type family film.
The dog naturally is just eye-catchingly magnificent, with the humans not far behind too. The always versatile Tchéky Karyo makes an excellent craggy grandfather Césa and Félix Bossuet is a very appealing and convincing Sébastien. His scenes with the Pyrenean Mountain Dog playing Belle are an undoubted highlight. BTW, good luck trying to find the name of the dog, without whom, there wouldn't have been much of a movie. He/she oddly doesn't appear to have been judged worthy of being mentioned in the credits, though I certainly appreciated Belle's work, along with that of the production's dog and animal trainers.