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Heidi is lively and friendly, and her grandfather, despite his rather dour appearance, becomes very fond of her. She loves the simple life in the mountains and befriends Peter, the goatherd, who is the son of their nearest neighbours. When her aunt appears to take Heidi into the town to work as a companion to a wealthy disabled girl, Clara, Heidi is heartbroken…
It’s a delightful story, one which I think I should read again some time soon. We watched the 2005 film adaptation on DVD over twelve years ago, and decided to watch it again last night. And it sticks pretty closely to the original story. The scenery is stunning, and given that it’s not a long film (not much over an hour and a half) it packs in plenty without adding anything unnecessary. The pace is good, and we were both engrossed in the story.
But we were both disappointed by the three main child actors. We weren’t sure if they were over-directed, or if they weren’t involved enough in the story to be really believable. Emma Bolger plays nine-year-old Heidi, and she does it as an enthusiastic, animated child. She has a slight Irish accent, which is a little weird, but I quickly got used to that. However she shows little emotion at the more poignant times. When she has to wait (more than once) outside her grandfather’s chalet, she doesn’t look at all anxious or afraid. When she’s supposedly crying, there are no tears - just some artificial-sounding sniffs. When she’s tossing and turning in bed, it doesn’t look real at all.
Worse is Clara (Jessica Claridge), who comes across as likeable but rather twee, as if she’s repeating her lines rather than acting. And although Peter is more believable, he seems much too clean to be a believable goatherd. And his jealousy of Clara, later in the film, is not really explored at all and doesn’t seem to fit with what we see of his character in the earlier scenes.
However, I thought that Heidi’s grandfather (Max von Sydow) was excellent. I could believe in him entirely as a lonely, irritable old man whose heart is softened by his lively granddaughter. I wasn’t sure why he seemed so old - he could have passed for eighty, which seems to me the age of a great-grandfather to a nine-year-old girl. But that wasn’t a huge issue and only occurred to me towards the end.
Diana Rigg is also very well cast as Clara’s grandmama. She comes across as a delightful, realistic woman who looks as if she’s in her late sixties. She’s kind and understanding, and quite lively too. And I liked Sebastian (Del Synott), the servant in Clara’s household, who befriends Heidi. His face is very expressive at times, as he attempts to be discreet and almost invisible serving at table, but also reacts to Heidi’s liveliness and naivete. There are one or two quite amusing scenes involving Sebastian, where his facial expressions made us chuckle.
There are two obviously caricatured adult characters in the film. Pauline McLynn plays Heidi’s strict, penny-pinching aunt, and Geraldine Chaplin is the appalling Miss Rottenmeier, who for some reason is employed as housekeeper at the house where Clare lives. Neither is supposed to be liked, and the exaggerated nastiness is a good ploy in a children’s film, so that - hopefully - they’re not taken too seriously, and therefore won’t provoke nightmares.
It’s a story about families, and friendship; about loyalty and the importance of looking out for other people. Despite the rather wooden acting of the younger people, I would recommend it, on the whole. The rating is U, and that reflects the wholesome story with a lack of anything that would merit a stricter rate. I don’t think it would be of much interest to anyone younger than about seven or eight, but for older children and teens (and adults who loved the book as children) it’s a good adaptation.
Our DVD doesn’t have any extras.
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