EXPAT CINEMA: "Ratatouille"

I fled to Costa Rica in part to watch more movies, because everyone knows that a life in the tropics lends itself nicely to holing up indoors with a fine picture. It feels prudent enough to jot a few things down with each viewing for posterity, so beginning today, “EXPAT CINEMA'“ will be chronicling this process.

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Upon an umpteenth viewing of Brad Bird’s Ratatouille, I never realized the extent to which this film works on a purely visual and kinetic level. Enough sequences play out without dialogue—Remy working out how to puppet Linguini stands out especially—to suggest that this film could function silently. The fact that the same sequence somehow justifies the objective ridiculousness of the movie’s premise, that a rat is able to excel in a gourmet restaurant entirely my manipulating a young man’s hair, only testifies to Bird’s effectiveness as a filmmaker. Most films would have spent inordinate amounts of exposition trying to explain away their conceits; Ratatouille plugs through with visual confidence, and pulls it off.