RICKY: DEFINATELY NOT YOUR AVERAGE BABY...

Well, I don’t know what you guys think about French films… Some love them, some hate them, I tend to do a bit of both from time to time… If you have never had much to do with them, it is high time you started, and as French directors go, the master director François Ozon is a perfect starting point…
And this is also a soft – landing as far as French films are concerned. It is actually an adaptation from a short story called Moth, by the British author Rose Tremain… And the combination of the two talents have made for a fantastic film… Ozon claims the film brings together many genres such as “thriller, comedy, science fiction and fantasy”. Most certainly an accurate assessment. Ricky is the story of a perfectly normal woman called Katie. She is a single mother and factory worker. One day, at work, she meets a man. A Spaniard named Paco, again completely ordinary… They fall in love – which is always an extraordinary occurrence – and Katie becomes pregnant. She gives birth to a healthy baby boy – a miraculous occurrence ofcourse but hardly out of the ordinary. But then, a month or two later, Ricky (afore mentioned baby) does something rather extraordinary. He starts growing wings…
To tell you the truth I hadn’t watched much Ozon ‘till I got round to Ricky. And I really did not know what to expect. The slow pace of the film and the lack of Hollywood-esque explanations will surely jar a bit with some viewers. (We are left to our own devices to figure out how Ricky comes to grow wings, although you most definitely will have your own idea by the end…) The great success of the film is that it gives a very accurate description of what you or I might very well do if our child grew wings… The reactions, the environment, everything surrounding Ricky is very down to earth, very REAL. And Ozon is definitely accurate in his description of the film. Science –fiction and stories, well it goes without saying. Comedy – I actually laughed out loud quite a few times during the film. Tension is definitely present, and I even had tears in my eyes at one point close to the end, although I can’t go into details for fear of giving spoilers… I’ll go one further and say that I even actually watched it twice. And loved it. Both times :)