L'illusionniste
Text: Aidan Mac Guill
If you have a spare 80 minutes this week you could do worse than sit down in a dark cinema and enjoy 'L'illusionniste', the latest film from the brilliant French animator and director Sylvain Chomet.
Chomet is best known as the creator of the Oscar-nominated 'Les Triplettes De Belleville' (or 'Belleville Rendez-vous' as it was released in Britain & Ireland), his retro tale of mobsters, mothers and the Tour de France. 'L'illusionniste', based on a Jacques Tati story, is set in the late-fifties. Tatischeff (Tati's original surname) is a French magician struggling to earn a living, and maintain his dignity, in an era that has moved on from vaudeville and the music-hall.
He is invited to travel to a remote Scottish island, to perform at a party celebrating the arrival of electricity to the community. There he is granted a hero's welcome, and encounters Alice, a young girl who believes Tatischeff to be truly magical. In this curious outsider she spots an opportunity to escape her old-fashioned hometown and experience life in the big city.
A little time is allowed to elapse before the nature of the relationship between the young girl and the man old enough to be her grand-father is established. This would appear to be a deliberate decision on Chomet's part, leaving a space for our modern sensibility to suspect something inappropriate approaching. As it turns out we have nothing to worry about - it is a familial bond that is formed by the pair. Indeed Tati had originally dreamt up the project as a way to reconnect with a real-life daughter he allegedly abandoned in her infancy.
The action switches to Edinburgh where the unlikely companions shack up in a run-down hotel inhabited by lonely ventriloquists and clowns, relics from a bygone era. The architecture, traffic and weather of the city is gorgeously rendered in the hand-drawn and painted style. There is a wonderful contrast between the earlier screwing in of the island's first light-bulb, and the omnipresent lush, bright lights of the city.
The film is not without it's flaws. It suffers from an almost suffocating note of melancholy, not helped by the absence of dialogue. The story is told first and foremost through imagery, as well as grunts, "oh-la-las" and the snatches of Scots-Irish that Alice speaks occasionally. The inhabitants of the island could be described as cartoons in more than just appearance (the first Scottish person we meet is drunk and dressed in a kilt). While Chomet and his team excel at creating bizarre-looking characters, especially ugly old men, they struggle for inspiration when drawing young people. Alice, in particular, looks a little plain in comparison to others. finally the running time, at 80 minutes including credits, hardly represents value for money
But though it is short, it is also somehow perfectly formed, and though it is sad, it is also gently and mysteriously so. It is a film about the past and the future, and connecting the two. In this era of CGI, where our apparent demand for in-your-faceness has led to the reemergence of the ludicrous 3-D format (which brings the story literally into our faces) it is a quiet and magical throw-back.
The action switches to Edinburgh where the unlikely companions shack up in a run-down hotel inhabited by lonely ventriloquists and clowns, relics from a bygone era. The architecture, traffic and weather of the city is gorgeously rendered in the hand-drawn and painted style. There is a wonderful contrast between the earlier screwing in of the island's first light-bulb, and the omnipresent lush, bright lights of the city.
The film is not without it's flaws. It suffers from an almost suffocating note of melancholy, not helped by the absence of dialogue. The story is told first and foremost through imagery, as well as grunts, "oh-la-las" and the snatches of Scots-Irish that Alice speaks occasionally. The inhabitants of the island could be described as cartoons in more than just appearance (the first Scottish person we meet is drunk and dressed in a kilt). While Chomet and his team excel at creating bizarre-looking characters, especially ugly old men, they struggle for inspiration when drawing young people. Alice, in particular, looks a little plain in comparison to others. finally the running time, at 80 minutes including credits, hardly represents value for money
But though it is short, it is also somehow perfectly formed, and though it is sad, it is also gently and mysteriously so. It is a film about the past and the future, and connecting the two. In this era of CGI, where our apparent demand for in-your-faceness has led to the reemergence of the ludicrous 3-D format (which brings the story literally into our faces) it is a quiet and magical throw-back.
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