Double Feature Theater

The film keeps unearthing eye- popping moments — hummingbirds as raucous suckers, time- lapse shots of flowers that hypnotize with balletic grace, skeeters whose tiny feet make infinitesimal dents on the glassy surface of a pond.

Often the camera draws back from close-ups of ants, bees, spiders and beetles to give a glimpse of the larger (yet unpeopled) world that conveys the changing of seasons and weather and a universe beyond. “Microcosmos” fascinates with its poignant mixture of abundant life and fateful loss.

French biologist-filmmakers Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou took 15 years to make “Microcosmos” in a gorgeous hill-and- dale site in rural France. That time span included a long research phase of simply figuring out how to film the creatures, then three years of actual shooting with microscopic high-tech equipment that would penetrate the exotic world underfoot. They had to watch where they were stepping.