Co-directed by Stéphane Berla, but elsewise this physically impressive animated fairy-tale* is all Mathias Malzieu. Adapted by Malzieu from his own book, musical score & songs by French band Dionysos (lead singer/front man Mathias Malzieu), he’s also the speaking & singing voice of Jack in the French version originale. Auteur overkill? It helps explain what goes wrong. The Dickensian opening follows a desperate pregnant woman in a snow-filled landscape fainting on the doorstep of a witch-like midwife. Birthing a nearly perfect boy (with an alarming crop of hair), he has but one defect: a frozen heart. Luckily, the childless midwife has a closet of cuckoo-clocks to take its place. But the boy must abide by three rules - ONE: Never touch the hands of the mechanical timepiece. TWO: Never get over-excited. THREE: Never fall in love! Leaving the boy in the midwife’s care (she’s long longed for a child of her own), Mother sneaks off without looking back, and the boy grows up, goes rogue, and, like fellow imperfect adventurer Pinocchio, breaks all three rules before finding his fate.* On the whole, the film is a joy to look at, but neither characters nor tale register as they must to gain emotional traction, largely because of Malzieu’s pre-immersion in his material. He forgets that while he’s familiar with everything in here, we ain’t. He doesn’t need a narrative nudge, but we do. And by never bothering to swing back and give us proper entry, we’re lost after granting him an entire act to clue us in and get us up to speed.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *CGI animation digitally styled to look like Stop-Motion. (I think.) In the English-language version, you can see the characters’ mouths are ‘speaking’ French.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Lots of Pinocchios out there. But stick with the 1940 Disney classic for comparison.
No comments:
Post a Comment