Directed by: Jeremy Clapin
Premiered at Cannes Film Festival 2019
Nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars.
It's the story of a severed hand which escapes from a laboratory and is trying to go back to it's body, reminiscing it's life when it was with the young man it was attached to. This hand goes through different hurdles in Paris, and this film present Paris from a bleak perspective and I haven't seen much of Paris in this tone. All we've seen is the glamour and the romance, whether it's Ratatouille, Midnight in Paris, etc. There's an inherent intimacy in the storytelling, especially the scene where Naoufel meets Gabrielle for the first time. The intercutting of the hand's story and the coming-of-age story of Naoufel was interesting, especially in the scene where the hand is cut.
This film certainly has a lot of depth, on the physical level it has a fun, and a visual conflict which probably a live action film can't pull off - a hand trying to get back to it's body. A conflict like this need not be and probably can't be explained anyway but visually. On an internal level, it's Naoufel's coming-of-age story, this comes through both - the writing and through the visuals. On a philosophal level it talks about complex themes like fate, destiny, free will vs determinism; which mostly comes through the writing. In the scenes of conversation, there's not much happening visually - they're shown from behind and the frame and even the subjects are almost static. I think having a lot of motion, just for the sake of it in these kind of intimate conversations, takes us away from the mood of the scene - just like the 20-min brilliant episode in Anomalisa.
I'm still getting used to this form, I definitely had really good experiences watching Pixar films, Anomalisa, Mary and Max, Spirited Away and I think channeling creativity with the lack of limitations is the challenge in making animated films.
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