Kirpianuscus but one who works in great manner. because it is an embroidery of stereotypes and clichés. because the poor gendarme represents more than the story of starvation but the social parable of success.and its price. and the old lady is adorable.short, one of films who preserves the flavor of Paris. with each its pieces/ingredients, from tourists to the...pigeons. and, sure, the music, humor and the dishes.

Stompgal_87 I first heard of this short when I saw that it was on the same DVD collection of short films as Andrea Arnold's gritty yet thought-provoking 'Wasp' and for a start I didn't know it was animated until I stumbled upon its IMDb profile, which made me want to see it more because I love animation. Upon watching it on YouTube, I found it bizarre yet amusing in parts.The opening and closing scenes of some American tourists in Paris were colourful with accurately-drawn backgrounds but also one of the most unusual parts of the film because I was expecting French dialogue, which was present in 'Ernest and Celestine' but they were speaking English with French subtitles on the screen. The human characters are oddly designed as well but the animation is smooth for the most part. There is minimal dialogue outside the opening and closing scenes and the colours of the scenes of the old lady feeding the pigeons are not the brightest. Although she speaks gibberish, I found her a generous character. The principal male character is grumpy and greedy but I enjoyed watching his bizarre nightmare where some human/pigeon hybrids eat a pig the old lady leaves for them as well as his insides. Another odd part was the repetitive sequence of the man coming to the old lady's flat wearing a papier-mâché pigeon mask to be fed from mid- September until Christmas Eve and progressively becoming fatter. The incidental music is nearly as sparse as the dialogue but I like its authenticity.Out of all four French animated independent films I've seen so far this year ('The Illusionist,' 'The Monk and the Fish,' 'Ernest and Celestine' and this one), this is the strangest one but all in all a pleasant surprise with its funny moments. 8/10.

FilmFlaneur If you have ever wondered what Sylvain Chomet, the creator of Les Triplettes de Belleville did before that, then I can tell you: it's this, an entirely characteristic, shorter and considerably darker tale of pigeons and policemen, allied to a cruel dig at American tourists in Paris. The animator's Searle-like style is already fully formed and one or two of the beloved character types from Belleville (the dog, the diminutive mother) appear here too. Vieille Dame is not however merely a dry run for the fully fledged feature, more an extended taster of a unique talent. At only 20 mins it is still worth seeking out and is coupled on disc with three other animations laced with dark humour, although sadly not by Chomet. Only available from Amazon.fr apparently as part of a 50 minute DVD, and without English subtitles - although as only one of the four animation uses language to any extent, and the lesser of these too, this is not a real problem. Recommended.

didi-5 This wonderfully dotty short film from the creator of Belleville Rendez-vous, Sylvain Chomet, really is fantastic. It has an original storyline - a starving gendarme, some greedy fat pigeons, a pigeon-obsessed lady, and some wild dancing.The animation puts its grotesque characters (which put me in mind of the drawings of Gerald Scarfe) into a world all of their own, where the gendarme fantasises about food, is irritated by pigeons, and eventually dresses up as one of the birds himself to continually visit the old lady for slap-up meals.'The Old Lady and the Pigeons' is the epitome of bad taste cartoons, a darkly fun half-hour in the company of skewed figures and warped minds.