L'enfant de la haute mer

A young girl lives all by herself in a village in the middle of the ocean. With only the gulls, the wind and the waves for company, she writes in her journal each day. She dreams that the pages from her book could be a sail, or that her broom could be an oar, anything to terminate her solitude. When something dark and menacing arrives, perhaps things will change? Then again... I liked the sketch style of this animation and the intricacies of the delicate touches to her (overlarge) head and it's facial expressions as this short feature builds to epitomise the powerful nature of senses of loneliness and isolation. That feeling that you don't exist, or that nobody knows or cares about you, emanates quite powerfully from this I felt - intended or not.

Child of the high seas is the graduation work of 4 students from France and definitely has one of the most interesting CGI graphics attached to a haunting story of a girl trapped in a time-space between two worlds. The animation is 7 minutes long and mainly the adaptation of Jules Supervielle's short story of the same name which is plotted on a dreamspace created within the mind of Charles Steenvorde who has lost his only child to sea in a terrible storm so delusions & unreality jumps out of the water like the flying fishes every moment. The animation just takes a piece of the real story to use its dreamlike atmosphere backed up with water color textured CGI graphics (!) and leaves the haunting part to watcher's further interest. The original story is a must read which also reminded me some aspects of "Tenshi no Tamago". This piece was shown within "Unfamiliar Worlds" part of France Animated Short Films festival and in my opinion was "creme de la creme" of the show. Unfortunately it isn't available in any format other than VHS tapes possibly stocked somewhere in French Culture Associations.

This little movie doesn't seem to have a real story to tell, but is more like a poem... a beautiful small, watercolored 3D-animated world unfolds and amazes you, though not long, 'cause the movie only runs for about 3-4 minutes. A must see!

I'm writing this short review to clarify one thing : this movie isn't the one everyone think it is. Other reviews are about a 2001 short movie made by students, that you can get for free on internet. This 1985 short movie is another one and it seems pretty much forgotten by now. I had the opportunity to see it by pure chance, as it was taped on a VHS 10 years ago by my mother. It's about 7 minutes long and tells the same story as the other movie, simply because it is the adaptation of a short story.

The visuals are like a René Laloux animated feature film. Since this movie was made in the same time period and also in France, it's not so surprising. The colors are a bit pale, the main character is transparent sometimes. The narrative is very abstract (not a single word is said in the film) and end with a quote that clarify the whole story.

It's a fine little short, very different from the new one. I tend to prefer the older one because of the better backgrounds and of it's surrealism, while the newer, a bit more realistic, do have some splendid visuals.