The Illusionist (2010)

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The Illusionist (2010) – S. Chomet

It’s another Jacques Tati feature come to life, even though the comic auteur himself died in 1982.  In actuality, he wrote the script (sometime after Mon Oncle) and his daughter asked animator Sylvain Chomet (who also did The Triplets of Bellville, 2003) to create the film, so that no live actor would end up playing her father.  Although not specifically M. Hulot, the Illusionist (named Tatischeff – Tati’s real name) gets into the same serene bungles, as he accommodates to the early 1960’s and the slow fade-out of the music-hall trade.  He isn’t alone in the seedy old hotel in Edinburgh where most of the film takes place – assorted clowns, ventriloquists, and acrobats also live there, feeling despair or seeking other ways to bring in money (Tatischeff moonlights in a garage).  All told, there is a wistful bittersweet air to the proceedings, not least because the illusionist is more-or-less adopted by a young girl (a cleaner at one of the venues he’s played at) who moves in with him and they develop a sweet wordless relationship that ends when it is time for her to move on and him to declare that magicians do not exist.  Oh but they do – not just in the form of Tati himself but also in the form of Chomet who has brought a thing of real beauty to the screen, hand-drawn but computer animated, subtly coloured in reds, greens, and browns, Miyazaki-like in the pleasure it takes in the environments that surround the action.  A wonderful tribute to the French legend and a contribution to his oeuvre (and to animation’s highlight reel) in its own right.