This short review appeared on The Upcoming website here.
Attila Marcel feels like
it should be a cartoon, which comes as no surprise since this is Sylvain
Chomet’s first live-action feature. Best known for The Triplets of
Belleville and The Illusionist, Chomet’s style is one of freewheeling
invention and madness barely contained within a slim storyline.
Beginning with a quote from
Marcel Proust’s “The Captive”, himself hardly a plot-driven writer, about the
dual ability of our memories to delight and poison, the film follows Paul (Guillaume
Gouix), a mute pianist, as he tries to reclaim a clear picture of a traumatic
past. With the help of Madame Proust (Anne Le Ny) and her seemingly drugged-up
madeleines, Paul reignites his childhood memories of his deceased parents,
mother Anita (Fanny Touron) and his sinister father Attila Marcel (also played
by Guillaume Gouix).
The film has many cinematic
forbears, from Tati to Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and it is full of nice little
observations and comic moments. A piano-tuning blind man (Luis Rego) stops to
mend a staircase railing that doesn’t make the same noise as the others when he
strikes it with his cane and some raindrops inadvertently play some sweet music
on a ukulele. Paul’s journeys into his own memories are Chomet’s chief
interest, shot in vibrant colours and seen entirely from a baby’s perspective
and populated with seaside musical numbers and huge dancing frogs.
Back in the real world, the film
is tellingly slight, with a number of minor characters (including a doctor
whose true ambition is to be a taxidermist) and incidents that never quite add
up to anything. The true story of the film is Paul’s emotional journey through
his memories via a drug-fuelled fever dream, which means that whenever he is
not under the effect of the madeleines, the film has nothing to do. It speedily
tries to add interest through pathos by offering more insight into Madame
Proust’s life and health, but it is clearly just killing time until Paul can
take another madeleine. Though Paul’s story is ultimately emotionally
satisfying at the end of the film, one may be left wondering what happened in
the middle.
Though slight, the film is likeable and often surprising.
Chomet has an eye for an interesting or odd image and the film does feel
pleasantly homemade. It is just a pity that its best moments – the moment with
the rain playing the ukulele in particular – feel like non-sequiturs.
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