DVD Tuesday: French Sci-fi Film Renaissance Paints the Future in B&W
Renaissance courtesy Miramax
DVD Tuesday: The animated Renaissance unfolds in gorgeous black-and-white, and if it owes a debt to Blade Runner, well, borrow from the best!
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I can never get too much of
Blade Runner (1982), but until the next
absolutely, positively definitive DVD edition comes out - which would be Dec. 18, with a theatrical preview starting Oct. 5 - I'm recommending
Renaissance, a black-and-white animated science-fiction feature that owes
Blade Runner a deep debt without being a rip-off.
The year is 2054, and Paris is in thrall to a company called Avalon, whose animated billboards promise "health, beauty and longevity" rather than old-fashioned "liberty, equality and fraternity." Brilliant Avalon researcher Ilona Tasuiev has been kidnapped and Barthelemy Karas, who rose from the streets to become a top cop, is assigned to find her. Suspicion at first centers on her sister, family black-sheep Bislane; they had a public fight right before Ilona vanished. But Karas quickly realizes that Ilona's abduction had something to do with her work on a top-secret immortality project, and with an earlier Avalon initiative that went terribly wrong.
If ever a film tripped the dark fantastic, it's
Renaissance, which manages to be even more purely black-and-white than
Sin City - and that's saying something. It's also proof positive that, Paul Simon to the contrary, everything does
not look "worse in black-and-white": It looks better. Cleaner, crisper, sexier, more sleekly menacing.
Renaissance's use of rotoscoping - tracing over live-action footage - produces phenomenally naturalistic movement; you can see the shift and roll of real flesh over bone. But it also captures rare nuances of performance: It's animated, but there's nothing cartoonish about it.
Some people find the story simplistic, but it worked for me, especially because the film's glossy, futuristic Paris is such a fully realized character, an elegant old lady whose flawless bones only look better by comparison with the hard, clean lines of glass sidewalks and soaring skyscrapers. And when it rains or snows, the result is simply breathtaking.
Renaissance is available both in the dubbed American version - which features a top-notch voice cast that includes
Daniel Craig,
Romola Garai,
Ian Holm and
Jonathan Pryce (apparently in the future, the English have reclaimed their language) - and in the original French, with subtitles. I prefer the subtitles version, and believe me, you'll never have any contrast problems with them!
Things to consider:
What's the difference between science fiction in the
Star Wars vein and the
Blade Runner school of sci-fi?
Do you have any favorite animated science-fiction movies? I love
Fantastic Planet (1973), for example - curiously, also French, not a country I associate with a large sci-fi output.
Do you believe that most science fiction holds up a mirror to present-day problems or issues, or is it really all about the robots and futuristic geegaws?
Previously in DVD Tuesday:
Blowup
Hot Fuzz
300
Ace in the Hole
Eyes Without a Face
Apocalypto
Citizen Kane
La Jetée
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
Bob le Flambeur
Near Dark
Perfect Blue
Pan's Labyrinth
Les Girls
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Queen
Expresso Bongo
I'm Not Scared
Shocking Grindhouse Double Bill! - Scanners and The Candy Snatchers
Don't Look Now
Re-Animator
Casino Royale
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Pi
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
Also:
This week's new DVD releases
