Thursday, March 22, 2012

Le Tableau


Jean Francois Laguionie has been a top-notch French animator for a long time. I've loved his work ever since I first saw it in Annecy when I was much younger. Such films as "Gwen" 1985, "A Monkey's Tale", 1999, and "Rowing Across the Atlantic", 1978.

Anyway, he was in town to show off newest feature, "Le Tableau". Surprisingly, the School of Visual Arts decided to show it in their small projection room – it seats about 50 people, so of course it was packed.

Variety gave the film a very good review so I was excited to see the French feature. The basic plot is about the battle in an artist's studio between sketches (sketched characters) halfsies (half-finished characters and Alldunns, the finished, painted personas.

It's a nice metaphor for life and the concept has a lot of opportunities to poke fun at contemporary society. But for some reason, the characters never really come alive, and the colors were very bland and flat. Also, the animation was digital but very limited (I'm sure they had a small budget).

But, it was great to see an animated film with adult emotions and ideas. I give it a C+.

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