Film Reviews

The Illusionist (2010)

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• Details: France/UK / 90mins (12A).

Fans of Sylvain Chomet's debut The Triplets Of Belleville will find themselves in comfortably familiar territory with this follow up. A love letter to a more innocent time, The Illusionist is beautiful to look at and is dotted with a thousand gorgeous touches but, like his previous outing, the events tend to get a tad repetitive.
Set in 1959, the story follows magician Tatischeff (Donda) as he struggles with a world that is passing him by – pop music is the big draw for kids now and Tatischeff finds his crowds ever dwindling. Employed by a Scottish pub owner, the magician travels to a remote Scottish island for a few gigs where he meets a young girl (Rankin) who follows him to Edinburgh. There, holed up in a dingy hotel room, the gentle conjuror endeavours to make a living. What follows is a series of episodes of their short time in the city.
With Pixar and Dreamworks dictating the Box Office draw for animation these days, The Illusionist, likes its protagonist, looks dated - but beautifully so. Chomet shies away from the hip characters, pop culture references and gags that dominate contemporary animation - there is no crazy lemur wobbling its bum to the latest hit. What is here, and it's here in abundance, is an inherent sadness and loneliness; like Triplets... despair is never far away from The Illusionist but before it all gets too much, Chomet wisely reels it in and swaps the melancholy with heart.
Like Triplets... before it, Chomet sets out to tell a story through images alone – Donda and Rankin might be 'voicing' the characters but the dialogue, if it can be called that, is barely grunts and mumbles. Sticklers for detail will find a lot to chew over – Tatischeff is the full name for Tati, star and director of the classic Mon Oncle, a film that gets a cameo clip when the magician wanders into a cinema called... Cameo Cinema. Edinburgh too is wonderfully rendered - a sweeping shot of the city is nothing short of majestic.
But the barely-there plot proves The Illusionist's undoing. Chomet doesn't give his two characters much to do and the director has a habit of hanging around a scene after its drama has peaked. But where the plot might be found lacking, what will fill the void is The Illusionist's massive heart and, crucially, that's what the audience will take away with them.

Review by Gavin Burke