Ernest & Celestine (2012)

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what I love most about the 2012 French animated feature Ernest & Celestine. Be it the story, animation style, or voice acting this little gem of a film can match any Pixar, Disney, or DreamWorks corporate concoction blow for blow, all in less time and with less cloying sentimentality.

Inspired by the works of Belgian author and illustrator Gabrielle Vincent, the titular characters of the film are immediately painted as outsiders at the opening of the picture. The bear Ernest, a loud and hulking starving artist, shunned from the quaint village life that the middle class bears we see in the picture live in, all because he refused to continue to live in the bourgeoisie bliss that his forbearers had planned for him. While in similar circumstances the mouse Celestine, toils underfoot of prejudiced mice and bears, forced to collect the fallen teeth of spoiled little bear cubs to be used to repair the busted choppers of her mouse brethren. Their fates intertwine when Ernest’s hunger and Celestine’s fascination with the “Big Bad Bear” lead both to rob a middle class bear family of their sweets and their pearly white merchandise, an action which leads to them spending an entire winter together as they try and evade the cops.

Though the two meet by chance, it’s not such a leap of faith to believe that these two could be merely just accomplices. They are, to use an oft-used cliché, soul mates. Not in the romantic sense of the word though. Ernest and Celestine’s relationship is akin more to that of Marc Anthony and Pussyfoot in the classic Merrie Melodies short Feed the Kitty (1952), a closeness analogous to that of close siblings or longtime friends.

And as far as influences are concerned, Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are stamped on every cell of this film. From the use of watercolors, lines that flow through the screen as light as air and at times burst into a starburst of colors, natural landscapes, and an evocative soundtrack. Ernest & Celestine, like the best Ghibli pictures, are all about mood and atmosphere and goes a long way to prove that animation is not just for kids.

Film Log 7.20.2015 (BiFan 2015 Edition)

Violator (2014)

Director: Dodo Dayao
Number of viewings: 1

Comments: This film scared the shit out of me. I'm glad I got to see the film on the big screen. A laptop cannot do justice to the sound design in the picture. The appropriation of religious imagery adds a lot to the horror and dread that permeates throughout the picture. Each act is punctuated by suicide. 

Film Log 5.27.2015

Cousin Jules (1972)

Director: Dominique Benicheti
Number of viewings: 1

Comments: Beautiful documentary. Unseen for several decades. Shot in the course of six years the film unabashedly shows the life of one man. The monotony of daily life is not boring though. Benicheti carefully shoots every scene. Though it is a documentary it feels far more controlled than other recent docs which often advertise their realism through shaky footage, bad lighting, and home movie style editing, yet in Cousin Jules there is a real sense of a director. Within a scene there is a wide variety of shots used and also there is an arc. By arc I don't mean the traditional Hollywood definition of an arc, but a sense that each scene matters and is building towards the film's quiet conclusion. Within a span of a cut many years go by. Benichetti holds on a short for several seconds and then cuts to an exterior shot of the countryside. What we don't realize until much later is that in the space between that cut many years have passed and Jules's wife has died. Does life have a conclusion though? What do our collective actions say about each and every one of us?

Film Log 5.24.2015

Stranger by the Lake (2013)

Director: Alain Guiraudie
Number of viewings: 1

Comments: Poisoned love. A film that could have been penned by Patricia Highsmith. Guiraudie's use of unassimilated sex and nonchalant attitude towards it points to the loneliness that all these gay men feel. The use of a singular location, the lake, illustrates just how removed these men are from the world. Are they hiding?running away? I don't think so, or at least maybe not all of them are. All these men are so mysterious. Michel, is he a self-loathing homosexual or does he murder only when he grows tired of his lovers? So many questions.