Preview. Full review will come with local release.
Inter-species love, happy poverty, sweetsThe thing that's great about the French animated film
Ernest & Célestine is the drawing, which has the same loose, light, Forties or Fifties pen & ink and watercolor sketch visual style as the children's book by Daniel Pennac. Never has there been a better antidote to the hard, plastic, puffy look of Hollywood or Pixar animations. The story, though sweet, about the fraught but ultimately happily-ever-after loving cohabitation of a bear (Ernest, voiced by Lambert Wilson of
The Princess of Montpensier and
Of Gods and Men) and a little girl mouse (Célestine, voiced by Pauline Brunner), is a little odd, to say the least, but only in a usual children's-book way. Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, are the Belgian guys who made the stop-motion animation
A Town Called Panic and they're joined by Benjamin Renner, who made the admired short
A Mouse's Tail..
Ernest & Célestine debuted at Cannes May 2012, opening theatrically in France 12 December after appearing in six or eight other festivals. Universal acclaim in France (Allociné ratings, both viewers and press, of 4.3) and the 2013 César for best animated film. Its US premiere apparently is the San Francisco International Film Festival, when it will show 28 April. Screened for this review in connection with the SFIFF.
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