Chomet’s The Illusionist is an adaptation of a script left behind by French film icon Jacques Tati that he penned between 1956 and 1959. Tati’s leading character, the nameless magician of the title, is a much more sober man than his iconic Mr. Hulot that had, by 1959, delighted audiences globally. So he shelved the project—perhaps finding it too close to his own life. Decades after his death, Tati’s daughter mentioned the unproduced script to Chomet while he was making The Triplets of Belleville and further suggested that 2-D animation would be the right approach to the material. After reading the script Chomet was entranced, and the resulting film is a delicate mash-up between his sensibilities and Tati’s.
As in Triplets, Chomet utilizes his preference for hand-drawn, 2-D animation very much in the angular, pen-inked, color-washed style of Disney’s 1961 classic 101 Dalmatians. (In light of the now-standard computer-animated movies, the 2-D process—imperfect, human and utterly enchanting—is worth noting). The leading character, an anonymous middle-aged man, is an obvious doppelganger for Tati himself. (Chomet has given him Mr. Hulot’s propensity for too-short trousers and bright socks, a humorous inside joke.)
The illusionist—headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland (a beautiful city gorgeously detailed by Chomet and his animators)—roams from gig to gig, performing his sleight of hand, enduring his perpetually cranky rabbit who bites everyone who comes too close and doing his best to ignore the entertainment sea change that is about to engulf him. (The encroachment of rock ‘n roll as live entertainment replacing latter day vaudeville in the late ’50s is shown vividly with a Beatles-like band bringing down the house to squealing fans while the illusionist waits and waits and waits backstage in a new sequence Chomet has added to the script.)
Into his life comes Alice, a young girl from a tiny Welsh village who is so inspired by his act that she sneaks her way into his life. Back in Edinburgh, ensconced in the shabby though elegant hotel favored by a slew of other variety entertainers, a pseudo father-daughter relationship ensues. Slowly, Alice blossoms into a young woman, alive to the powerful spell of experiencing city life for the first time.
Although the characters speak from time to time in phrases we are meant to understand rather than hear (a lovely conceit), Chomet’s movie is mainly told in visual terms, along with pitch-perfect sound effects and a first-time, rather lilting score (one of the 2010’s best) that he composed. The score delightfully compliments the segments that link The Illusionist—an altogether convincing animated movie for adults that is not meant to be anything more than the charming, bittersweet trifle that it is.
It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that The Illusionist and the cinema of Tati would be adored by placid Tom and Gerri, the elderly, deeply contented married couple at the center of writer-director Mike Leigh’s Another Year. As played by the marvelously understated Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen, Tom and Gerri are a twosome whose happiness and simple approach to life are easily enviable. Their noisome, troubled friends—particularly Mary (Lesley Manville), Gerri’s accident-prone, wine-swilling co-worker who slowly falls apart as the movie progresses, seasonally, over the course of a year—are especially envious. Not much seems to rattle the couple but eventually even their patience is tested by the increasingly inappropriate outbursts from their increasingly disturbed friend.
Leigh’s tremendous observational skills—as ever—are front and center as the couple try to do what they can for Mary; their equally drunk, unhappy friend, Ken; and Mike’s widowed brother, Ronnie, as the movie plays out. Not much seems to happen in this kitchen-sink comedy of manners but, then, not much ever happens in Leigh’s movies. Yet one leaves Another Year marveling at his emotional insight and the deeply felt moments that seem to spring out of the everyday that Leigh has captured time and again.
Gwyneth Paltrow has her strongest part in years as the emotionally messed-up country superstar Kelly Canter in writer-director Shana Feste’s Country Strong. She’s given songs that show off her vocal chops and dazzling stage presence, monologues and scenes that are powerful and a character that Paltrow rides for all its worth. But the movie—a convoluted, torch ‘n twang amalgamation of All About Eve, The Rose, A Star Is Born and Nashville, not to mention all those country-singer biopics—keeps bucking Paltrow’s character out of the picture like a mechanical bull at a country western bar. Instead, Feste favors subplots focusing on a hunky singer-songwriter, an innocent up and comer and a conniving husband (played by country superstar Tim McGraw, who, jaw droppingly, does not sing a lick)—none of which have a fifth of the authority and interest that Paltrow brings to the proceedings. In the process, Feste’s movie leaves her frustrated audience in the dust as surely as it does Paltrow—an oversight that is more than a mite shameful.
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