Zazie dans le Metro

Louis Malle's fresh and freewheeling comedy chronicles the adventures of a spirited, uninhibited 10-year-old girl spending a weekend in Paris with her eccentric uncle (Philippe Noiret), enigmatic aunt (Carla Marlier), and various friends and strangers. Zazie dans le Metro bowed in 1960, right at the birth of the French New Wave, but despite affinities in style and sensibility, it's not really a part of the movement. Instead, Malle's cinematic adaptation of the acclaimed comic novel by Raymond Queneau looks back to silent movies, surrealist shorts, Looney Tunes cartoons, and Frank Tashlin and Jerry Lewis comedies more than the playful anything-goes experimentation of the New Wave. Malle uses jump-cuts, madcap sight gags, and Keystone Kops chaos in attempts to find a visual equivalent for the novel's dazzling wordplay. The title is a joke in its own right—all Zazie (portrayed with exuberant unruliness by Catherine Demongeot) wants to do is ride the Metro, but it's closed by a transit strike—so she runs wild through the streets, leaving mayhem in her wake. While there are some mild references to sex and “homosessuality” (the misspelling in the subtitles is deliberate), the quite innocent Zazie dans le Metro makes for fine family viewing. Debuting on DVD and Blu-ray, extras include archival interviews with Malle, Queneau, and Demongeot, and a new interview with assistant director Philippe Collin. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)