My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts; With Grandma

Lovingly recalled grandmothers are the focal point of two new National Film Board of Canada animated productions. The Oscar-nominated My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts, from Torill Kove, is a rather simply animated but wonderfully elaborate (and imaginatively embroidered) tale of the filmmaker's grandmother, who worked at a laundry shop where she ironed the King's shirts (Prince Karl of Denmark who essentially came to Norway to take the newly reopened monarch position). When WWII broke out, the King fled to a hideout that is now mostly remembered as the place where "Tonya Harding's shoelaces came untied," and Kove's grandmother--though she lost her beloved client--found renewed purpose in surreptitiously maiming the shirts of her new clientele: the Nazi occupiers. Kove's wonderful reminiscence concludes with her grandma being decorated as a resistance fighter. Funny and charming, this is warmly recommended. Aud: E, I, P.Taking the opposite tack, Francoise Hartmann's With Grandma is a beautifully animated (swirling pastel colors created from wax crayons on glass) wordless homage to a young girl's relationship with her grandmother. Little of note happens: the grandmother embroiders while the young girl plays with a bird, the pair page through a photograph album together, they work in the garden...but that's partially the point. Special times with relatives aren't necessarily special because of what happens, but rather because of who it happens with. Unfortunately, unless it happens to catch the viewer in a sentimental frame of mind, this atmospheric piece will strike many as little ado about less. Optional. Aud: K, P. (R. Pitman)