A version of this review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.

The Illusionist is a gentle, melancholy and nostalgic piece of filmmaking. The film is based on an unproduced script by Jacques Tati, the late French icon who can best be described as France’s Charlie Chaplin. Like all Tati’s work (Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, Play Time, Mon Uncle), The Illusionist is essentially a silent film with all the physical and sight gags you’d expect. And though he has been gone now for several decades, Tati’s effervescent and amiable spirit infuses every inch of the sumptuous celluloid.

The Illusionist opens in Paris where, thanks to a new fad called rock ‘n’ roll, a magician—clearly Tati—is forced to accept evermore obscure and humiliating assignments, performing in front of miniscule audiences. (How much of Tati’s script is autobiographical, I wonder…) At one such venue on the Scottish coast, the transient magician meets Alice, a young waif who is astonished at his powers and believes his enchantment real. They do not speak the same language, but their bond is so real that when the magician leaves for Edinburgh, Alice stows away on the ship to be with him.

In the big city, amongst of community of destitute vaudevillians, Alice adopts the magician as a surrogate father. She cooks and cleans for him while he finds work where he can get it. Much of his hard-earned and meager salary is spent on increasingly extravagant gifts for the young girl who is his greatest fan—gifts she believes are conjured into existence just for her. To reveal that magic is counterfeit would be to rob her of her greatest enchantment and he of his greatest admirer. But at some point, all fathers, whether literal or adopted, are abandoned. What happens when young girls blossom into womanhood and leave behind their make-believe?

Don’t tell Sylvain Chomet, who also directed the luxurious The Triplets of Belleville, that traditional 2D animation is dead. The Illusionist lacks the bombast of most modern animated fare and is all the more appealing for it. The film, with an immaculate attention to detail, is sumptuous, surreal and exquisite. Characters, many of whom are eccentrics with faces mirroring Fellini’s grotesques, move with a sublime, otherworldly fluidity. The Illusionist is moody and surreal, a charming anthropological feast for any Francophile. Chomet even manages to summon an Edinburgh that is peculiarly and deliciously French.

Ultimately, The Illusionist is quite a bittersweet film. It allows itself to confront the dark side of broken dreams, and even the desire to end this life and thus one’s perceived irrelevance. While some characters face the final credits with new hope and optimism, others ride into a cold and rainy night, wiser and lonelier. But do not let this confession dissuade you from seeing this film. Charming and graceful, The Illusionist tells a gorgeous tale of love and loss with delicate whimsy and tender humor.

© Copyright 2011 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.

Directed by Sylvain Chomet
Starring: Voices of Jean-Claude Donda, Eilidh Rankin
Rated PG for thematic elements, smoking and a near suicide.
Running Time: 82 minutes