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Cannes head honcho Thierry Fremaux has been a vocal supporter of the medium of animation this year, noting in most of his intros for animated films that these should in no way be seen as lesser to the live-action entries in this year’s program. And there’s a lot of them. This is the first of two animated dispatches by yours truly from this year’s Cannes, perhaps a sign of a shift in the ethos of this fest enabled by the worldwide success of “Arco” and “Little Amelie or the Character of Rain,” two 2025 Cannes premieres that ended up with Oscar nominations.
The best of the crop so far is Louis Clichy’s sweet “Iron Boy,” a tender film that first feels like a coming-of-age comedy but weaves in themes of faith, family, and fellowship in a manner that’s subtly brilliant. Employing a style that looks more like watercolor paintings than traditional hand-drawn sketches, Clichy reveals how much he learned in the art departments of “WALL-E” and “Up” regarding how to marry image to character and theme. This is a gentle, often beautiful film that could easily take the exact path carved by “Little Amelie” last year to worldwide success. In fact, I think this is a better film.
Christophe is an ordinary student in rural France. Ten years old when the film opens, he’s struck by an inconsistent spine, one that forces him to tilt at inopportune times. He sometimes imagines being able to put the whole world on its side with him, and Clichy sends people and things into the air with “Twister”-esque abandon. The more grounded reality is that Christophe will have to wear an orthopedic brace, right at the age when he’s trying to figure out who he is and who he wants to be. He’s forced to be an iron boy.
While Christophe is going through that awfulness, he’s torn between three things: His family, a first crush, and a growing interest in music. His distant farmer father, struggling with the crops in a down year, pushes Christophe to find a different paternal figure in a church organist, who teaches Christophe the art of the organ.
Clichy layers in some truly beautiful compositions, giving the painterly look of “Iron Boy” an appropriately classical score, but he also lets Christophe have some fun, especially with the cute girl who realizes he’s a shoplifting cheat code because he’s gonna set off all alarms anyway.
“Iron Boy” really snuck up on me, revealing that its early scenes of awkward youth were just the gateway to a confident character study of a boy trying to find his place in a world in which he just keeps falling down.
The animated film at Cannes most likely to really explode with American audiences is Leah Nelson’s undeniably moving “Tangles,” a heartfelt adaptation of Sarah Leavitt’s graphic novel of the same name. The reason for that isn’t just the A-list cast of recognizable names but the relatability of the film’s subject matter: The pain of watching a loved one degrade to the point that they no longer recognize your face. “Tangles” is a story of being cheated by dementia, a personal love letter to a mother taken too soon. Anyone who has lost their mom earlier than they should have will be moved, even if some of it plays a bit shallower and more manipulative than I hoped it would. It’s the kind of film that you’d have to be truly emotionally guarded to leave unmoved, even if you can tell when the heartstrings are being tugged.
Sarah (Abbi Jacobson, doing great voice work) has moved from Maine to San Francisco in 1999, getting a job at a queer alt-weekly where she does great illustrations for the cover. She’s at that age in her early twenties when she’s really carving out her own life, figuring out who she’s going to be, when she’s remind of who she was on a trip home.
Mom Midge (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) doesn’t seem quite right. And why did she get fired from her job? Dad Rob (Bryan Cranston) starts off in full denial, as does sister Hannah (Beanie Feldstein), but it’s not long before the diagnosis is clear: Midge has early on-set dementia. It will move fast. It will be brutal. It will be unfair.
Nelson and her team give “Tangles” a janky style that reflects some of Sarah’s work, although not directly mimicking the character’s aesthetic. The film is mostly black-and-white, sometimes exploding into different styles to make an emotional point. Honestly, I wanted a more adventurous spirit in the visuals of “Tangles”. As is, it’s a surprisingly traditional family drama, right down to two needle drops in the final act designed to turn anyone who might not be crying yet into puddles.
Don’t get me wrong: It’s well-made, and it will be especially moving for anyone who has faced the horror of dementia, or even just people who know that their mother is the reason they were allowed to be who they are. “Tangles” works because it’s more than a eulogy; it’s a thank you.
Finally, there’s the well-meaning but overly familiar “Lucy Lost,” a French film that owes such strong visual and storytelling debts to Studio Ghibli that it made me want to watch “When Marnie Was There” when I get home. Like that underrated fantasy-drama, this is the tale of a girl who sees the impossible. What begins like another story of a girl and her imaginary friend becomes something much more narratively twisted, folding in characters, time, space, and even a notable historical tragedy. There’s a lot to “Lucy Lost,” but I never quite found its emotional register. It’s not a horrible film, just one that is trying to do so much that it slips away.
Oliver Clert’s film is set in World War I, where we meet an 11-year-old girl named Lucy, who has white hair and has been kept hidden from the community when the film begins. We’re not sure why she’s an outcast in this Scilly Isles village, but it could be because she talks to someone who isn’t there, another precocious girl named Milly. She claims to be a girl from the U.S., who is somehow communicating across the Atlantic to Lucy. Why? It takes a while for Clert to get there, leading us to wonder if this is a story about mental illness before it becomes a tale of genuine magic.
The look of “Lucy Lost” is vibrantly colored but a bit forgettable in its character and setting design. It’s a nice enough film aesthetically, but it’s the narrative that spins out of control, becoming more of a fantasy mood piece than the first half implies it will. By the end, the impossible has happened for Lucy and Milly as time, setting, and character have blurred in a way that’s not as emotionally powerful as its creators hoped because we don’t have enough to hold onto. It’s not a total loss, but there are better animated films to find at Cannes this year.
from Roger Ebert https://ift.tt/z6mc4oU
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