A 40-year-old orangutan takes center stage in Nénette.
On May 24, 2011, Kino Lorber released French documentarian Nicolas Philibert’s movie Nénette, about a 40-year-old orangutan who has lived most of her long life in a French zoo, on a two-disc DVD
Born in the jungles of Borneo, Nénette is the oldest and most beloved inhabitant at the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes in Paris. She is a mother of four and has survived three mates, and she bonds only with a few select keepers.
In the documentary, filmmaker Philibert (To Be and to Have) follows the everyday lives of Nénette and her fellow apes as they exist behind bars at the zoo. Humans don’t make any appearances in the film — we only see the faces of some of Nénette’s half-million annual visitors as occasional reflections in the glass, though we do hear their recorded comments and conversations alongside interviews with the zoo keepers.
More a minimalist study of life in captivity than an anti-zoo diatribe, Nénette enjoyed a limited theatrical rollout across the country.
Also included on the DVD is Philibert’s 1996 hour-long documentary Animals and More Animals, which takes a stylized look at the art and science of taxidermy.
The Nénette DVD carries a list price of $39.95.
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