There’s almost no one who can be described as regular in Dimitri Planchon and Jean-Paul Guigue’s French adult animation film, Blaise. It assembles a most delightful set of quirky, poker-faced characters who seem to be forever caught in the grips of dysfunctional families, off-kilter personal relationships and professional partnerships.
Based on Planchon’s own comic strip, it is centred on the gawky, underconfident, teenage loner Blaise Savage (voice: Timéo Béasse) who is a bit too socially anxious to make friends. Ridiculously pliant he doesn’t express even a sliver of an opinion. The kind who’d be quiet and all by himself in a corner with a drink in hand in a rambunctious party.
The parents are freakier than him. His Mother Carole (voice: Léa Drucker) is cold-blooded and calculating, despised at work though the success of her next project hinges on getting along well with the new team. Will she be able to accomplish it? Father Jacques (voice: Jacques Gamblin) doesn’t seem to get anything right. Jobless for almost all his life and afflicted with allergies, he craves attention and respect that he never gets. All the three remain alienated and disjointed from each other.
The Savage family isn’t alone. Even romance comes kooky with Blaise pairing up with an uber revolutionised young Joséphine (voice: Nina Blanc-Francard) who believes in violence as a political tool and, in her crusading zeal, is ready to blow up everything. She, curiously, is the only one who doesn’t just notice him but finds him mysterious and can spot “great depth and dignity behind his silence”.
Full marks to the animation (graphic design by Planchon) for breathing life in each and every one of these eccentric figures. The cut-out paper/digital photomontage style renders human faces in a wonderfully detailed manner, down to the minutiae of the deadpan look and the misfit personalities captured in all their glorious imperfections, down to the oversized, bulbous noses. Even a side player has intriguing individuality, like the self-obsessed TV actor who thinks everyone is his fan when nobody recognises him. A therapist/counselor who herself has a lot to share, unburden and seek help for and a coworker who gets irate about just five minutes of overtime.
It's no wonder Blaise won the Grand Prix in the Contrechamp competition section at the recently concluded Annecy International Animation Film Festival and Market. The film had its world premiere earlier in May in the ACID (Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema) sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival.
At one level the film can be read as a serious satire on contemporary families, society and work culture—the constant expectations and defined standards, cutthroat competition and intense scrutiny and evaluation, that are enough to overwhelm the oddballs and the not-so-gifted. The resultant lack of self-esteem and alienation makes them recede and turn quiescent. But Planchon’s writing, as surly and sharp as the artwork itself, scales things up. He pushes the envelope with his distinct blunt and brazen sense of humour.
He has a way of creating some extremely bizarre and terribly funny situations for his freaky characters to get caught in. His mind conjures a protest that turns into a violent battleground after the throwing of a bottle of beer. There’s a wild, loud party where people, unable to hear each other, talk at cross-purpose. A heightened evocation of lack of communication and connection. A“misunderstanding” makes a woman discover her hidden desires and sexuality. A middle-aged man loses track of his old mother at a hospital reception. And an office celebration involves chips, the game of monopoly, dancing and spilled grapefruit juice leading to some serious mix-up.
Even politics can’t escape Planchon’s delicious drollery. Marxists get lammed for living like capitalists, youngsters are criticised for not having “political consciousness” and in all of the madness, one rational thought stands out: a revolution is a mere rupture in our fractured, malevolent reality that actually demands “continual uprising” to set the clock right. Touché!
