Illusionist

Sylvain Chomet created one of the wackiest and most wonderful animation movies, Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003), aka Belleville Rendez-vous in the UK, gaining Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature as well as Best Song. The Frenchman's debut, a delightful short film (La vieille dame et les pigeons, 1998), earned him his first Oscar nomination, and in 2011 he was up against the best of Hollywood again (Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon) with L'Illusioniste.

He couldn't win, of course, but the publicity should have helped attract more art-house attention and a better chance of getting a return on the 72-minute film's US$17 million budget. It's a charming small-scale animated presentation of an unproduced live-action scenario written by the French mime and comic actor, Jacques Tati. A love-letter to one of his daughters, the simple tale shows how an ageing French vaudeville magician meets a girl and finds his own peace of mind amid the naturally magic beauty of Edinburgh.

Chomet's brightly sketchy style of artwork looks as exquisitely old-fashioned as a Victorian book's illustrative drawings, and ideally suits the wispy storyline. Little happens in action terms, and much of any live film's impact would have depended on Tati's physical and facial antics. These are rendered well, without exaggeration, by the animated character, but the naive young woman's expression and character are less well articulated.

She doesn't realise she's exhausting the magician's funds by expecting him to produce all her clothing desires by magic. When the funds are gone, and work is no longer available in decrepit music halls or rowdy private parties, he tries to hide from her his work as a department store window attraction. His ventriloquist colleague has pawned his puppet and become a fulltime alcoholic; fearful for his own future, the magician resolves to leave the girl with her new boyfriend. He strides off, telling her there are no magicians, releasing his irritable rabbit.

Such a pensive tale can verge on the maudlin and melancholy (as did previous Oscar outsiders such as Australia's Mary & Max). Chomet avoids that danger, and keeps his audience's attention by always having one or more of animation's visual treats on display as a side-feature of the main action: clouds, lights, mirror and window reflections, shadows, water and smoke. Only the latter will have marred the movie's acceptance by many parents - the Tati character is depicted as a virtual chain-smoker.

A short and slightly-bitter-sweet movie, this is animation magic at its art-house best.