A boy emerges from the woods and finds amour

The Day of Crows/Le jour des corneilles (AKA "The Day of the Crows) is a hand-drawn animated film helmed by Jean-Christophe Dessaint, his first direction of a feature; he has workked on an animated TV series and was assistant director under Antoine Delesvaux and Joann Sfar of the much-admired (and César-winning) Rabbi's Cat (ND/NF 2012). This script is by Amandine Taffin, adapting from Jea-François Beauchemn's French Canadian novel depicting a boy known to himself and his father only as "Fils" or Son (Lorànt Deutsch), who has been raised like a wild child in the woods by his bitter, fearsome and tyrannical father, known as "Courge" (Pumpkin) (Jean Reno). Events lead Son out of this harsh, feral existence into a world of kindness and love. This is a sweet story with many little delights to the eye.

Things change for Son after his father is badly injured in a fall and the boy, going against his father's admonitions in the past but urged on by half-human half-animal spirits that are his guardians, drags his father out of the forest into the "Other World." This leads the boy to a little town -- we appear to be in rural France in the Twenties or Thirties -- where he lugs his dad to seek help. There is a small military HQ and across from it a hospital. Though Son knows nothing of civilization he manages to get help from the benevolent Doctor (the late Claude Chabrol; his final film credit), who operates on Pumplin's broken leg. Thus Son meets a girl of his own age, Manon (Isabelle Carré), daughter of the Doctor, whom he's sent to play with during his father's surgery and from whom he beings to learn more about the real world. By Manon's side Son discovers love and civilization, and begins to seek out where his father's love for him also may be hidden, because Son believes it must be somewhere. Eventually the story behind Pumpkin's bitterness and his fanatical avoidance of the village emerges. When crows come into the story -- with Son communicating with one he helps, following the model of kindness learned from the Doctor -- bird also become helpers and friends, instead of being only killed for food (by Pumpkin) or for sport (by the brutes of the military HQ).

In style The Day of Crows somewhat evokes the animations of s Hayao Miyazaki, a link perhaps heightened by the frequent appearance of anthropomophic animal figures. These gentle guiding spirits, half ghosts of the living, half animal spirits of the forest, become protectors and guides for Son and also for Manon and in a sense for Pumpkin. This is an authentic children's fantasy that draws us into its own world rather than providing easy parallels or moral lessons for everyday life.

Day of Crows is a film out of Canada but is a Canada/Belgium/France/Luxembourg production. It depicts a struggle between a magical world that's also the wild and feral world and a more real and everyday one, and, obviously, a search for love.

Day of Crows , 96 mins., debuted at San Sebastian. Hollywood Reporter writer Neil Young, who reviewed it in detail but not altogether favorably, felt this film "isn't quite distinctive enough to stand out in an environment so jam-packed with flashier computer-animated rivals." Well, this labor of love about about love will appeal precisely to all those who are tired of the endlessly cranked-out Pixar et al. computer-generated pictures. Young sees links with f Shrek and Truffaut's The Wild Child - even M Night Shyamalan´s The Village and, in the final third sees parallels with Ken Loach's Kes -- and he notes that while the forest and valley landscape drawings and even the village have a lush period quality, Son and Manon are drawn in a more contemporary way; he sees Son as not unlike a figure in "Peanuts." This is all true, though Son is a distinctive and very lively character who comes across very different from a comic strip in these rich settings.

The film was released in France and Belgium in October 2012. It may be even more appreciated in Canada, with those who know the original story. But as Young says, on TV and DVD it may have a great future in many French-speaking countries. All the voices are well done, with Carré and Deutsch cute and appealing, Reno appropriately resonant and gruff, and Chabrol warm and mellow. Bruno Podalydès is present voicing a nurse and another character. This is a finely crafted piece of work whose story line -- more important than its drawing -- is fresh and interesting. I wish I could have seen it when I was eight or ten. This is a resonant myth for children, one worth remembering.

Le jour des corneilles, 96mins., opened in France October 24, 2012 to excellent reviews (Allociné press rating 3.9 based on 20 reviews). Screened for this review as part of the joint Unifrance-Film Society of Lincoln Center series, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, where it will play Sat., Mar. 9, 1:00pm at the Walter Reade Theater. It becomes available in France on DVD and Blu-ray March 6, 2013.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.