Tag: 2D animation

The Prince’s Voyage (Le Voyage Du Prince)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Hidden away in the LFF’s Family section where it looks like a suitably harmless piece of children’s animation, this turns out to be a fascinating exploration of difference and bigotry set among different simian races.

Prince Laurent, King of the Laantos turns up on the distant shores of the land of the Niokous. After being subjected to a full medical and scientific examination by Professor Abervrach and his team and their discovery that Laurent doesn’t speak their language, the Prince is sequestered in huge, secluded rooms within the Professor’s vast labyrinthine mansion complex.

Abervrach is assisted by a nurse named Nelly and the decidedly less friendly Elizabeth. He wants to present the newly arrived stranger to the science academy to prove his thesis about other races existing outside their country

The one person with whom the Prince really makes a connection is a boy named Tom. Selected by the Professor to be the stranger”s companion, Tom is gifted at languages, able to learn the tongue of the foreigner and consequently communicate with him. They talk for hours and become firm friends.

Through their discussions it emerges that the city visible through the mansion’s vast windows is slowly being overrun by the jungle surrounding it. This is confirmed by occasional elements of vegetation which appears to have forced its way into the edges of the mansion’s interior architectural features.

Eventually, Tom takes Prince Laurent on a trip outside to see the Victorian-styled city viewable from the mansion’s huge windows, where they board a tram and travel a circular route which takes them out of the city into the jungle beyond and back in again. They also find themselves attending local revelries in the form of a masqued event called the Festival Of Fear. Fear, it seems, is the guiding emotion in the metropolis.

Tom’s initiative in organising this trip will incur the Professor’s displeasure and lead to Tom’s being barred from visiting the Prince, who will later become caged like a zoo animal and put on public display. Tom will help him escape. Together, they will discover the wonders that lie beyond the confines of the city’s deeply regimented world.

The fact that all the characters are apes, some of whom treat others as inferior, has echoes of the Planet Of The Apes franchise(s) (1968, onwards) which originally sprang from French source material, Pierre Boulle’s novel Monkey Planet/La Planète Des Singes. It’s not Laguionie’s first foray into this territory: he previously made A Monkey’s Tale/Le Château Des Singes (1999).

The Prince’s Voyage is also remarkable for conjuring a whole other world, one in which a nineteenth century aesthetic holds sway. Somehow, that seems a good fit. Maybe it’s because Victorian sideburns are not entirely dissimilar to simian facial hair. Maybe it’s because on some subliminal level we make a connection between the period and Darwin’s theories of man being descended from apes. Either way, the visuals look fantastic on the big screen, taking the tale to a whole other level. And when The Prince and Tom finally leave the city for the jungle, what the directors achieve with that latter environment is equally visionary.

While there’s nothing here that’s unsuitable for children, this 2D animated slice of French fantastique is a clever fantasy that never insults an adult’s intelligence. Plus, the LFF are showing it in the original French language with English subtitles (with English voice translation on headphones for younger viewers). A visual treat.

The Prince’s Voyage plays in the BFI London Film Festival. Watch the film trailer below:

I Lost My Body (J’ai Perdu Mon Corps)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

This unique 2D animation opens with a discussion about how to catch a fly before splitting into two parallel narratives. In one, a severed hand goes on a quest in search of the body from which it has become detached. In the other, boy meets girl. This is the boy who at a later point in the film will lose his hand in an accident. The opening fly discussion turns out to be a flashback of the boy.

The hand shows great ingenuity as it escapes rats in a subway, climbs medical skeletons in a storage room and duels with an aggressive pigeon in a roof gutter. It has a pretty hard time of it physically. And when it eventually finds its body, reuniting with it proves far from simple.

The boy, Naoufel (voiced by Hakim Faris in the seen French version and Dev Patel in the upcoming English dub), is working as a pizza delivery boy, a job to which he isn’t particularly suited. One night, he gets involved on a minor road accident which means he’s late with a delivery. The customer for whom he’s late is a girl, Gabrielle (Victoire Du Bois in French, Alia Shawkat in English), living in a block of flats. He gets into a long and involved entryphone conversation with her and, without knowing what she looks like, falls in love with her voice.

Naoufel then sets about trying to track Gabrielle down. This leads him to her ailing grandfather who he talks into giving him a woodworking assistant position in the man’s workshop. This turns out to be his dream job. But he initially wants the job to be near the guy’s granddaughter. And then these relationships go horribly wrong.

This will keep you guessing as to how the hand got severed and how the whole thing is going to work out. En route, the plight of the hand searching for its body will keep you riveted as it undergoes a series of perilous scenarios, while the parallel story of the boy, the girl and the grandfather proves genuinely affecting. Assorted flashbacks revealing elements of the boy’s childhood and his relationship with his father also prove illuminating.

It’s difficult to know how the film would play out as special effects live action – but as 2D animation, it works just fine. It’s not a horror film, more a sort of action-adventure, existential romantic drama, captivating in the relationship parts and thoroughly compelling throughout.

I Lost My Body premieres at the BFI London Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It’s out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, November 22nd and on Netflix from Friday, November 29th.