(France/Belgium/Luxembourg,
79 min.)
Dir.
Benjamin Renner, Vincent Patar, Stéphanie Aubier; Writ. Daniel Pennac
Starring: Lambert Wilson, Pauline Brunner.
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| Courtesy of Mongrel Media |
Crack the spine and curl up with some popcorn, for Ernest et Célestine is a bedtime story
come alive. This French animated film—winner of the César (French Oscar) for
Best Animated Film—is vivaciously adorable and extraordinarily rendered. The
joy of watching the painterly cartoons and reading the subtitles makes the
experience of Ernest et Célestine
much like reading a children’s story and watching it spring to life from the
pages of the book.
Ernest et Célestine, quite appropriately, should be enjoyed by parents and children alike in the way that both generations relish a nighttime reading session equally. The film is based on the series of children’s books by the late Gabrielle Vincent, which chronicles the tales of two mismatched misfits. Ernest, voiced by Lambert Wilson (Of Gods and Men, Catwoman), is a sugar-loving bear, while Célestine, voiced by Pauline Brunner (Cars 2), is a pint-sized mouse. Bears and mice don’t co-mingle in the painted streets of Animal Land. The animals, actually, live in separate societies: bears roam the streets, while mice hide underground.
Bears and mice fear one another, as each animal-town keeps
interaction at bay by a little fear-mongering. Bears fear mice for many of the
same reasons that we humans do, since they sneak and squeak through our clean,
tidy houses—a mama bear even screams like an old lady from Looney Tunes when Célestine appears in her den. Mice, on the other
hand, fear bears thanks to the natural order of the food chain, albeit
hyperbolically so, thanks to a fine bedtime story told to Célestine and her
litter of friends by the dormitory schoolmarm. (Fairy tales are often so grim.)
Mouse and bear set aside their differences, though, and
Ernest and Célestine band together as a pair of roguish misfits. Ernest et Célestine, like every good
fable, offers a smart uplifting lesson that parents can teach their kids after
reading “The End.” As the pair of outsiders joins forces and stands up to their
narrow-minded species, the film offers a morale that resonates easily and
soundly with the messages of anti-bullying that are circulating a soundly in
many homes and schools. The lesson isn’t the least bit on the nose, though, so
the moral of the story doesn’t override the film’s amusing play.
Accentuated by a jazzy score by Vincent Courtois, the
adventure of Ernest et Célestine is
an enchanting odd-couple story full of whimsical charm and humour. Wilson is
fun and gruff as Ernest, while Brunner adds a childlike innocence to the
voicing of Célestine. The two outsiders are most loveable, though, for their adorable
animated interpretation, which renders them in smart, simple strokes.
The film feels fully appreciative of the canon of children’s
lit that precedes it, and it paints an Aesop Fable in a striking fairy-tale-land
of watercolour forests and cities. The team of animators in Ernest et Célestine paints a world that
recalls the sparsely, yet richly, rendered illustrations of a children’s book:
rarely do the images of Ernest et Célestine
span the full width of the frame; rather, they fill a white page with a splash
of colour that brushes the friends’ world in smooth, playful strokes. Ernest et Célestine provides only the
bare necessities in its remarkable illustrations, as the images blend into the
background and gradually wash out into whiteness, allowing the viewers to fill
the gaps with their own imagination. This film will delight young viewers with
its frisky story of the mouse and the bear, but the grown-ups in the theatre
might appreciate the film even more thanks to its unique, nostalgic visual
scheme.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Ernest et Célestine screened in Ottawa at The ByTowne as part of
the Canadian Film Institute’s DiverCiné Festival.
It plays at TIFF Kids April 10, 11, and 20.
It plays at TIFF Kids April 10, 11, and 20.
