I radically misjudged Naissance des pieuvres when I saw it at the fest. That thing has been growing on me in hindsight in a big way. I've talked to a few other people about it and read some reviews online and done quite a bit of backwards reflection, and all I can say is, it was Tuesday (traditional home of the Traditional Tuesday Night Freak-Out), the Megatron thing had just happened, I'd come out of a couple of lacklustre flicks in a row and I wasn't entirely on board with my queer cinema search-and-exalt mode. Looking back at everything that went down there, I think a) it's amazing this thing didn't fire off every single wheelhouse alarm in my person, by sheer virtue of subject matter, and b) the fact that someone had the balls to make that flick at all is substantially praise-worthy. Calm and sure of itself, it didn't have enough bells and whistles to grab attention in the middle of the 51-film slate, but on its own it would have sent me into paroxysms of cinematic fervour. So yeah, I think that sucker might end up on my ten best list for the year. I really wanna see it again, which is a good sign, but it's not being released Stateside till next year.

Oh, and the title actually translates as Birth of Octopuses. Which I only learned now because honestly, why would "octopuses" be in my limited French vocabulary? Now I know. (And knowing is half the battle.)