Never On Sunday

Watched Azur and Asmar, a full-length animated film from Belgium, I believe, a fairy tale of two boys thick with love and rivalry. The boys are as light and dark, but otherwise alike as twins. Twins who fight a lot. One might say incessantly. Symmetry between the two, and between their native cultures, is the central theme of the movie. Azur begins as a young lordling and Asmar’s mother his foreign nursemaid; later the boys’ status is reversed as Azur goes questing and becomes a beggar in a foreign land where Asmar has become revered and his mother a queenly merchant. Eventually, they compete directly for the hand of the djinni princess, but not without rescuing one another from the hazards they face along the way.

Like Summer Wars, which I reviewed a few days ago, I picked it out on nothing more than the implied endorsement of NYICFF, where it appeared a year or two ago. But what a difference!

In contrast to Summer Wars, Azur and Asmar is highly experimental. Visually, it employs an eclectic pastiche of sytles, combining flat drawings with rotoscope with computer animation with live action hands with scenes from historical art treasures. Its narrative draws heavily from medieval and renaissance fairy tales but aggressively challenges their social assumptions. The experiments don’t often work: the character designs squat in the uncanny valley, the backgrounds are sometimes so striking as to hurt the eyes, and the modern fairy tale often comes across as an exercise in political correctness. About the only part we genuinely enjoyed was a young princess—Eileene especially liked her—with a precociousness verging on creepy, and her bodyguard who had nothing to say but, hilariously, “Royal princess must not do this!” (You had to be there.) The rest of the movie ranged from unesthetic to interesting but unsatisfying.

Nevertheless, it was worlds better than Summer Wars and entirely deserving of a spot at NYICFF. If it wasn’t exactly good, it was still different, challenging, stimulating. Good for kids with too much access to formulaic TV. For adults, too. In many ways it reminded me of the surreal morality play Fantastic Planet (“La Planete Sauvage”), which I saw in my college days and detested, despite critical acclaim. It wasn’t put together right. It didn’t achieve its ambitions. But it was, at least, eager to shoot for the moon, and that makes a world of difference.