Nénette

This peculiar but affecting and thought-provoking film from French documentarian Nicolas Philibert focuses on a 40-year-old orangutan housed at the Jardin des Plantes Zoo in Paris. For 70 minutes, Philibert's camera peers through the glass of the cage where Nénette sits quietly in the straw, returning the gaze of the humans outside. Apart from some ambient noise and periodic plaintive wails of music, the soundtrack consists of the babble of conversation from public visitors as they contemplate Nénette, along with zookeepers' reflections about Nénette's long life and behavior, coupled with experts' disquisitions about simians in general. As the ape stares into the lens with sad, soulful eyes, one can't help but think of her in anthropomorphic terms, wondering what she's thinking and feeling, which inevitably leads to reflection on the propriety of imprisoning animals—particularly other primates—for people's amusement. A revelation about steps taken to ensure that Nénette doesn't mate with her son Tubo, who shares the space with her, underscores the level of human intervention in the natural order. On the DVD, Nénette is preceded by Philibert's 10-minute short Night Falls on the Menagerie, which wordlessly observes the various animals at the zoo as the facility closes and the sun goes down. The double-disc set also includes the director's 1996 documentary Animals and More Animals, which looks at the stuffed-toy collection at France's Natural History Museum. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)