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Wednesday, June 12, 2024

LE TABLEAU / THE PAINTING (2011)

Fittingly, that most painterly of French animators, Jean-François Laguionie, has a film about a painting.  Specifically, the goings-on among the ‘living’ figures on an unfinished canvas.  And what a busy, interesting, beautiful surface it is.  And if Laguionie misses a few opportunities (some more important than others), he’s turned out a remarkably beautiful object.  Using a mostly Fauvist palette (think Derain, Bonnard, and presumably that's Auguste Renoir making a guest appearance at the end), our main interlocutor is young, mischievous Lola, who introduces the characters moving within the picture frame, all living under a strict caste system keyed to their level of completion before the artist stepped away from his work.  Will he ever come back?  The figures who are completed, finished in form & color, lord it over the yet to be colored ‘Halfies’ and the lowly ‘Sketchies,’ mere line drawings of indeterminate status.  Naturally, there’s a love story crossing caste lines; a chase to stop a mixed band of runaways seeking equality; a daring jump out of frame (literally) to freedom.  (Faith in an unknown painting?)  With many an adventure, many a discovery, close calls in Brave New Picture Frame Worlds, and an attempt to find the painter and see if he ever intends to return and finish up.  Lots of philosophy mixed in (rather like GROUNDHOG DAY in some ways; free will anyone?  (Great for an imaginative kid, assuming a nude woman in the traditional reclining position is okay.)  Eventually, paint is discovered by the unfinished, but this soon gives way to riots of overindulgence.  You know, playing tennis without a net, rules, regulations or lines.  This idea needs a lot more development to gain the moral complexity it deserves.   Perhaps Laguionie was running out of time & money.  For once, a sequel would be an excellent idea.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Wonder how a CGI animation would handle a film all about paint on canvas.  Here, in a hand-drawn feature, it’s a natural.

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