The Hedgehog

"The Hedgehog" sneaks up on you with its heartfelt storytelling and sophisticated wit.

A satisfying emotional experience.

A reminder that, sometimes, the movies can get a beloved book exactly right.

This a movie with such a light, stylish touch, it makes no claims to profundity and is a sweetly hopeful experience.

"The Hedgehog" is a treat: a movie that's smart, grown-up, wry and deeply moving.

Enchantment will go a long way toward overcoming implausibility, but there's not enough of the former here - and far too much of the latter.

Nicely crafted, The Hedgehog seldom aims to be more than a pleasant low-key diversion-at which it succeeds-so it's jolting when the story pulls an abrupt late turn that casts everything in a more serious, ambitious light.

11-year-old Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic) is rich, precocious and extremely judgmental in the way that only a privileged child can be.

A French drama that finds its power in the little moments.

Le Guillermic is fine in this calm comedy of subverted exteriors and expectations, but it's the remarkably unpretentious -- earthy, even -- Balasko who anchors Achache's adaptation.

... it's Josiane Balasko that makes it work.

Balasko's performance is the highlight, as she breathes believable inner life into the stock character of the lonely, embittered widow.