You have a desire for cinema but do not know what to choose among the theatrical releases? In Premier Rang, Maya Boukella, pop culture journalist at Madmoizelle, recommends a film to be shown. This week, we are transported by the new Michel Ocelot.
Fortunately, by looking carefully, and by attending several very average sessions, you end up finding an outing that is worth leaving home.
This week, our First Rank is The Pharaoh, the Savage and the Princess by Michel Ocelot. Kirikou’s dad’s new movie is out in theaters this Wednesday, October 19.
The Pharaoh, the Savage and the PrincessWhat is it about ?
After a West Africa and a Maghreb tinged with magic in Kirikou and Azure and Asmar then an immersion in the Paris of the Belle Époque with Dili to Paris, Michel Ocelot gives free rein to his imagination in his new film. This time, there is no question of choosing: the director gives us to see three tales, three eras and three worlds.
The film transports us from ancient egypt to medieval Auvergne and ends in the Ottoman Empire of the 18th century, in Ottoman costumes and Turkish palaces. The footage of barely 1h20 is populated by godsof tyrantsof vigilantesofcrafty loversprinces and princesses doing as they please in an explosion of color.
The return to the sources of Michel Ocelot
Since Kirikou and the Wild Beasts in 2005, Michel Ocelot continued to adapt to the new animation cinema technologies. Released in 2018, Dili to Paris was a real formal experimentation in which the director mixed Pictures of Paris that he himself had taken, 3D decorations and characters illustrated in brightly colored dishes.
We could therefore expect him to continue this technical exploration in his new film. However, there is nothing. The Pharaoh, the Savage and the Princess is more of a back to basics of the director and a tribute to his own filmography. Thus, we find the comfort of Princes and Princesses (2000) or Tales of the Nighthis two films in Chinese shadow wherein characters told several tales inside the filmin a great screenplay and visual sobriety.
So every tale has its own visual identitywhich makes the film particularly entertaining. There is also a large Consistency between form and contentsince aesthetics of the tale is always linked to the time, place and subject depicted.
For example, the characters in the second storyare rather frozen looking black shadow puppets. In effect, The wild brings to light the violence of a rich, obscurantist castellan with a closed mind. Conversely, the last tale, which recounts the encounter between the world of a donut vendor and a princess, is much more animated, colored and remind the visual splendor ofAzure and Asmar.
In this cloudy month of October, The Pharaoh, the Savage and the Princess is therefore the perfect cinema outing to take children on a journey through space and time, or simply to bite into a pretty Proust madeleine.
