What a lovely antidote to the yuckiness of The Neon Demon. My Life as a Courgette is a French stop-motion animation about a little boy, Icare but Courgette to his deadbeat mother. When she dies, he is sent to an orphanage where he must contend with Simon, the resident bully.

The heart of this story is the children at the orphanage – Ahmed who wets the bed, Alice, who shows signs of the OCD of her mother, Jujube who eats toothpaste, Béa, who thinks every visitor is her mother come to fetch her, Simon who is not as bad as he first seems and Camille, who changes everything. It is a sweet story and beautifully rendered. The dialogue and interactions of the children feel authentic and the few adult characters help create a stylised yet believable world.

Bechdel test – pass

4.5 stars