As the star of Truffaut's "Les Quatre Cents Coups," Jean-Pierre Leaud
was guaranteed his place in film history from the very beginning.
However, unlike other child actors, he has gone on to have a long and
lustrous career in cinema working with some of the best directors of the
last fifty years. Now aged 75, he made "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" two
years ago playing, and playing magnificently, an aging actor, (a
variation of himself, I'm sure), making a comeback for a young auteur
but finding instead that he's caught up in a very different kind of
film being made by a group of young children around a decaying mansion.
"The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was directed by the Japanese director
Nobuhiro Suwa and can be viewed as a tribute to Leaud, to cinema and to
childhood. It's both ambitious in its scope and deceptively simple, a
beautifully shot valentine to those things Suwa clearly loves. Death is
always present but there is also a great deal of life here, too. This is
a magical picture in so many ways and it really shouldn't be missed.
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