[Film Review] The Illusionist (2010)

English Title: The Illusionist
Original Title: L’illusionniste
Year: 2010
Country: France, UK
Language: French, English, Scottish Gaelic
Genre: Animation, Drama
Director/Writer/Music/Editor: Sylvain Chomet
based on the original screenplay by Jacques Tati
Rating: 7.1/10

Having cut his teeth in his astonishingly whimsical feature-length debut THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (2003), French animator Sylvain Chomet lays his hands on a sensational project based on a never-produced script by Jacques Tati, and stars an animated version of Tati himself, and this is THE ILLUSIONIST, a nostalgia-tinted navel-gazer that leaves much to be desired.

1959, an elderly illusionist Jacques Tatischeff (Tati’s birth name) struggles to find work in Paris, and peripatetically plies his outmoded trade in the Great Britain, his audience is dwindling, cannot compete with the Rock n’ Roll fad. It it in a remote Scottish village, one of his port of calls, that Jacques meets a young girl Alice, out of sheer goodwill, he purchases a pair of new shoes as a parting gift for her kindness (ironing his shirts), which he presents to her with a magic gesture, yet, convinced that Jacques is a veritable magician (an idée fixe she also misconstrues from the impression that he can stop the snowfall), so Alice decides to tag along his journey and they end up in Edinburgh together (a city where Chomet lives now).

From then on, the story over-eggs the pudding by Alice’s increasing materialistic desire, a fashionable dress, a pair of high heels, her hankering inadvertently prompts Jacques to take on demeaning odd jobs, but he is too kind-hearted (or maybe even masochistic) to dash her dream that he is an omnipotent magician, until she meets a young boy of her age, and falls in love, that is when he decides to depart, leaving her a note says “magicians do not exist”.

While one can read this as a father’s unconditional love to his daughter, indeed it is the case of Tati’s original script (but the question of to which daughter remains rather moot, though Chomet’s film is dedicated to Sophie Tatischeff, Tati’s second daughter, not the alleged Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel, born out of wedlock and whom he disowned in 1942), but watching it out of the context, Tati’s story does not tally with our 21st century ethos and Chomet might feel too reverential to temper the urtext (a homage to MON ONCLE feels more like a requisite than a surprise, humorous snippets like the rabbit meal is few and far between), ergo, it is navel-gazing in its message (treating a young girl with a paternalistic approach does hurt the film’s credits) and its signification of a bygone era feels slight .

Still, Chomet’s fanciful, wistful bande dessinée animation is strong on show, his chromatic modulation is first grade, and the cityscape of Edinburgh cannot be more artistically alluring, clearly, his cottage-industry modality (he is the director, writer, editor and music composer all in one) reflects an industrious and time-consuming effort that truly deserves a pat on the back, but habitus changes, THE ILLUSIONIST from Tati’s time also needs some revisionist tweaking to appeal all comers.

referential entries: Chomet’s THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (2003, 8.8/10); Tati’s MON ONCLE (1958, 8.6/10).