Think French anime. In Jean-François Laguionie’s hands, this delicate mood-and-memory piece works like close-up magic, confounding expectations within touching distance. Hand-drawn in a soft water-colored look, it plays out in calm style, charting an unlikely year in the life of Louise, a senior on her own in a deserted coastal resort town. She’s missed the last train out at summer’s end, and when a record high tide floods the town, a full year passes before any visitors return, leaving Louise to fend for herself. Turns out she’s a natural Robinson Crusoe, able to handle every need & small crisis while drifting occasionally into reveries of times past. Presented as if balanced on a razor’s edge between the real and the magical, it’s consistently lovely to look at with Laguionie’s drawing style hitting a peak when a stray dog enters the story as a natural companion, a visual feast of black & white brush-strokes. Mostly for grown-ups, the pic is an amble, a memorable one.
DOUBLE-BILL: More French animation with a watercolor like palette in the kid-friendly ERNEST & CELESTINE/’12.
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