Les escargots

A strange short piece - I watched this because I like René Laloux's Fantastic Planet a lot. If you like strange and odd things and got the chance put this 10 minute running piece on your screen, you won't regret it, or at least won't lose much time.

This is an animation that is hard to describe. Its not bad, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it. Its not very long, so I would recommend finding it on YouTube and giving it a watch. Its certainly an experience.

Sad that many reviewers seem to interpret any level of visual creativity as the result of drugs, or that the viewer should need to enhance their viewing experience with drugs. This one doesn't even really require any interpretation, it's a pretty straightforward fable, almost a children's story of a sad farmer whose tears result in over-sized vegetables that attract even more over-sized snails! The snails go on an entertaining rampage through the nearby city (which seems to be populated with prostitutes and artist's models - oo la la!) Just when you think the threat is over - well, there goes that farmer crying his tears again!

This is fun, absurdist humour in the style of Terry Gilliam (it also reflects his animation style of using stop-frame animation of cut-outs). Visually, everything looks great: scratchy, jerky, with washed-out colours that presage the look of this duo's next film, La planete sauvage.

Recommended if you want to enjoy some simple storytelling with a unique visual aspect that delivers a few laughs.

A struggling farmer discovers that his tears make his lettuces grow massive. Sadly this also applies to the snails who feed on the crop. They soon set off and terrorise a city causing widespread destruction.

It's a very basic and silly story-line. It's really only there to allow for some memorable images. It's an early bit of work from Fantastic Planet creator René Laloux. Like others from the director it's has one foot firmly in the surrealist camp. It also reminded me quite a bit of the kind of animation that Terry Gilliam would go on to be famous for in Monty Python. It seems to be influenced partially by sci-fi schlock movies where over-sized creatures run rampant terrorising the local population. But more than anything this is a comedy. It's even occasionally quite funny with scenes of the farmer devising way to ensure he keeps on crying, he wanders his fields reading Hamlet and later with a device that hammers him repeatedly on the head. It's overall too short and slight to make too much of an impression but it's a fun film nevertheless.

Every film of René Laloux force you to think and to make and effort to imagine more than Laloux visually offers. Nowadays seems it isn't an easy and pleasant activity. Unfortunately, we don't have time to the extremely slow and methodical pace of his way of filming.

His old-fashioned animation delightfully remembers the cartoons of my childhood. But in this case the plot is weaker than other Laloux shorts and films.

I strongly recommend the masterpiece "Comment Wang-Fo fut sauvé". Based on a novel embodied in the 1936 book "Nouvelles orientales" written by Marguerite Yourcenar.