Le lion est mort ce soir

As the star of Truffaut's "Les Quatre Cents Coups," Jean-Pierre Leaud was guaranteed his place in film history from the very beginning. However, unlike other child actors, he has gone on to have a long and lustrous career in cinema working with some of the best directors of the last fifty years. Now aged 75, he made "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" two years ago playing, and playing magnificently, an aging actor, (a variation of himself, I'm sure), making a comeback for a young auteur but finding instead that he's caught up in a very different kind of film being made by a group of young children around a decaying mansion.

"The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was directed by the Japanese director Nobuhiro Suwa and can be viewed as a tribute to Leaud, to cinema and to childhood. It's both ambitious in its scope and deceptively simple, a beautifully shot valentine to those things Suwa clearly loves. Death is always present but there is also a great deal of life here, too. This is a magical picture in so many ways and it really shouldn't be missed.