Part 1: The Features
This year’s Ottawa Int’l Animation Festival offered a god mix of great animation and pieces that left audiences asking ‘What the hell did I just watch?’ But that what’s so great about festivals. They’re like a box of chocolates, except you can’t eat them all while waiting for the bus to take you to see Jenny and your illegitimate kid. I’ll get to all the great shorts soon, but first I’d like to offer my two dimes (adjusted for inflation) on the three very diverse features that screened in competition.
Persepolis
There are films that generate a lot of buzz and apparently have something very important to say, but somehow they fail to spark your imagination and get you excited to see them. Persepolis was that sort of film for me, but then I saw it. I was lucky enough to grab one of two remaining seats for the sold-out Thursday night show. There were at least a hundred people still waiting outside to buy tickets, something I thought I’d never see for a black-and-white animated feature, especially one set in Iran and told in French with English subtitles.
Unlike all animated features produced in the U.S., Persepolis is not a cartoon. In fact, it could easily have been shot live action. The black and white animation serves to recreate the feel of Marjane Satrapi’s best-selling graphic novel of the same name, which chronicles her experiences as a young woman living in Iran during the Islamic revolution. I’ve always felt that the best animated films make you forget you’re watching animation because the characters, settings and situations feel so real. Persepolis certainly manages to achieve this, even with its simply drawn (but expertly executed by French studio 2.4.7 Film) animation style. In fact, the film is probably more gripping than it would have been in live action because the story is stripped down to the bare essentials and not fluffed up with showy cinematography and I-want-an-Oscar acting.
Directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, Persepolis deals with some heavy subject matter, but it’s also very funny and endearing. At a time when Iran is reemerging as an enemy on the world stage, this film reminds us that the country’s people are not so different from us. A rebellious young Marjane Satrapi hits the black market to buy Judas Priest and Michael Jackson cassettes, goes boy crazy and later gets herself out of a blue funk by working out to the ‘Eye of the Tiger’ theme from Rocky IV. She and her family also struggle with the national politics of the time, something many Americans can relate to these days. It’s easy to look at a culture that makes women wear veils and assume that we share no common ground, but this movie illustrates that there are real lives behind those veils, people with many of the same hopes, dreams and desires that we have.
What I find exciting about Persepolis is that it proves that animation can be used to tell a variety of stories, not just fractured fairytales and talking-animal capers. Assuming that the film gets any kind of decent release in the U.S. and around the world, it will attract audiences that don’t normally attend animated movies, and, hopefully, it will whet their appetite for more. The English-language version will feature the voices of Sean Penn, Gena Rowlands, Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni (Deneuve’s daughter), and punk rocker and Iggy Pop. Sony Pictures Classics will release it in select cities in the U.S. on Dec. 25.
Aachi and Ssipak
Imagine going to Disney or DreamWorks and pitching an animated feature set in a society where defecation is rewarded with an addictive popsicle, then imagine how long it would take security to arrive and throw you off the lot. Thank heavens for South Korea. They not only made this thing, but pumped enough dough into it to allow director Bum-Jin Joe and JTeam Studio to make it well. It’s a nicely animated, crazy and very adult action-comedy that is certainly not for everyone, but anime fans looking for something off the beaten path should certainly seek it out.
This is going to sound nuts, but here it goes. Everyone in Sh** City has been implanted with an anal ID ring that allows them to receive their Juicy Bars upon bowel evacuation. When the Diaper Gang, a sewer-dwelling clan of mutants resembling demented Smurfs, sets out to take over all Juicy Bar trafficking, a fetish porn producer gives them the idea of implanting a bunch of rings in one person who can poop like no one else. The reluctant subject is a porn actess who has caught the eye of Aachi and Ssipak, a couple of struggling street urchins who set out to rescue her. Throw in to the mix a virtually indestructible cyborg cop and a sadistic child government official and you’ve got the makings of a bloody, action-packed and often very funny movie like nothing you’ve seen before.
Aachi and Ssipak is not my favorite anime feature of late, but it’s entertaining from beginning to end and features a very accomplished mix of 2D and 3D animation, well-executed action sequences, great characters and enough originality to warrant a recommendation. The ending even suggests a sequel, which I’d definitely check out.
Free Jimmy
The biggest surprise in the feature competition, Free Jimmy is another animated movie that could only have been made abroad. The Norway/U.K. co-production from director Christopher Nielsen is also intended for adult audiences and largely nixes formulas in favor of doing the unexpected at regular intervals. I thought I’d seen it all until I saw an elephant detoxing with the aid of a moose.
Scripted by fanboy favorite actor Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz, Shawn of the Dead) the English-language version boasts the voices of Pegg, Woody Harrelson, Jim Broadbent, Kyle McLachlan and Samantha Morton. Based on a Norwegian graphic novel, the plot has a quartet of lowlifes joining a dilapidated Russian traveling circus. Unbeknownst to the others, Harrelson’s character has sewn a load of heroine into the rear end of a sad-looking, doped-up elephant named Jimmy, who’s missing one tusk and has the other bolted together. While a group of extreme animal rights activists works to spring Jimmy, a trio of ruthless Lap mafia thugs come looking for the heroine and soon have a vested interest in the animal as well. Adding to the trouble is a group of hunters determined to bag a moose. All of these characters eventually come together like a perfect storm of mayhem in an ending that you have to see to believe.
Some clueless parents will no doubt see this on a video shelf and pick it up for their kids, scarring them for life. Finding Nemo this is not. There’s some fairly graphic cartoon sex and characters drop the F bomb quite frequently. Still, the film is surprisingly touching at times, especially in scenes involving the relationship between Jimmy and the moose.
While I prefer the original title, Slipp Jimmy Fri, I found the pic highly entertaining and quite funny, and appreciated the fact that no punches were pulled for the sake of political correctness. It screened immediately following Persepolis and required a major shifting of gears, but the audience seemed to have a good time with it. Sure, the human characters sport decidedly ugly designs and the animation by Storm Studio is often clunky, but as Norway’s first CG-animated feature, it’s hopefully a good indication of wacky things to come from the country’s animators.
