Director Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville) adapted an unproduced script by Jacques Tati, a French filmmaker. The title character is a genteel, elderly magician who struggles to keep audiences interested in his old-fashioned sleights of hand. The illusionist’s lonely life brightens when, while performing in a pub in a small Scottish village, he finds an appreciative audience of one in the form of Alice, a chambermaid. She follows him to Edinburgh where he sort of adopts her and they stay in a boardinghouse for worn-out circus people. The illusionist maintains his dignity while what there is of his career crumbles and he’s forced to take on menial jobs in order to buy pretty things for Alice. Meanwhile, Alice grows more attractive and confident.
The movie is almost entirely wordless and what dialogue there is comes in grunts and grumbles. And the humor must be French in sensibility because I either didn’t understand it or missed it completely. And perhaps the low-grade comedy isn’t supposed to be funny, but to establish a sense of melancholy for by-gone times. Using both hand-drawn and computer-generated animation, Chomet pallet is constrained and beautiful, which only partially compensates for a story that’s uninvolving. 1/3/11
1 comment:
Director Sylvain Chomet has created a beautifully animated film without much of a story or much humor. Whats the point?
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