Kaena: La prophétie

Presented as the first full-length 3D-generated animated movie from France, Kaena was first an idea for a video game that was expanded into a `real' movie. A fantasy/sci-fi tale, it takes place on of flying forest made of gigantic vines inhabited by a tribe of humans, who, in order to appease their gods, must harvest the sap of the vines. Trouble is, the harvest is no longer what it was and the gods are somewhat angry. A young woman, Kaena, who looks like a cross between Lara Croft and Princess Mononoke, understands that the gods are up to no good, and fights them with the help of unexpected allies and funny sidekicks. The plot follows the well-used pattern where a young misfit must save the world from dark forces, battle monsters and unearth world-shattering secrets, and the script borrows from many previous ones (fans of French sci-fi comics will recognise bits of the `Adventures of Alef-Thau', written in the 80s by Alexandro Jodorowski, who is also credited on Kaena). The script is also certainly quite European in spirit, with more overt sexuality and a indictment of religion probably unimaginable in a mainstream US-made cartoon.

While a little lacking in plot, Kaena mostly succeeds as pure eye-candy. Since the representation of realistic humans is still out of reach for computer graphics (Cf. the mixed results in Final Fantasy), the authors have chosen a half-comic-book style (like in Ice Age) which is quite pleasant, at least if you like people with really big eyes. The movie creatures are quite nice, particularly the talkative worms with their tired faces and their walking and flying devices. But it's the sets which are the most beautiful, with a particular attention to lighting, colouring and texturing: many scenes are shot in a golden light, slightly overexposed with lens flares and other atmospheric effects. The mixture of quasi-photorealism and more traditional CG style works quite well. The vine forest, the village and the spaceship scenes are exceptionally rendered, and among the most beautiful seen in a CG-rendered movie so far. The world of the gods, by contrast, has a dark, liquid and sticky feel (the gods themselves are liquid, gigeresque creatures) with bright shining reflections, and is truly original. Sometimes, there's a little too much of everything, as if the movie was a demo for CG effects (hair, particle systems, volumetrics.), not unlike the first Technicolor movies where everything had to be brightly coloured. But that doesn't detract from the WOW! Factor of the movie.

All in all, Kaena is a very recommendable movie, and one can hope that the authors will follow with a bolder script.

Kaena has been produced both by Canadians and French so to those who might be wondering, Canada being a bilingual country, this film has been made both for English and French audiences from the start. Kaena is a lovely orphan who lives on her own. People from her village toil incessantly in a desperate attempt to satisfy their God's thirst for a certain material, which they're having more and more trouble to produce. Kaena being somewhat on the edge of that society, having no authority above her is the only one who is not working and therefore she can afford to take some time to think. Thinkings gets her to doubt what she has been taught about Gods and fearing for her people's safety she sets out to discover the depths of the threat that these Gods have been enslaving her people with. This film is a journey to the truth and a quest for freedom. Will Kaena find what she seeks? Will her people be saved from the wrath of the Gods? If you wanna know just go and watch it because despite what some may think of the outfits of Kaena or of the designs, all you will see is a great show of colors and of emotions. Those who have been seeking humour in that film have been misled because this film was intended to bring the viewers to a state of emotion and to reflect upon some struggles humanity still has to face. Far from being a movie for the kids, it is suitable for teenagers, young adults and older viewers alike. I have seen it in French but since i'm a native speaker it was no problem for me but the choice is up to you.

I was fascinated by the story, the characters and the CGI was well done, but it lost 2 points from being a 10 because, while very, very good, the CGI was very brown, muted and had an almost sepia quality to it, additionally, a lot of the action is in heavily shaded locations. This made some of the scenes very hard to make out, and when there was quick action on the screen, it turned into a muddy blur.

Add to this the liquid quality of a lot of the scenes and a kind of HR Giger look of the sap aliens, and you get some scenes that, because of the difficulty, distract from the over-all enjoyment. You tend to dwell on the previous scene, trying to understand what you just saw and heard, and miss some of the present action.

I thought the voice acting was superb. The wonderful Richard Harris, in one of his final roles, was great as usual. Kirsten Dunst was very good also, and added a lot of energy to the role. The worms and other "comedy relief" characters were fine.

Over all an intriguing fantasy, with above average voice acting, and very well done graphics, even if sporadic at times. I would have preferred a tad more lighting, and perhaps a splash of colour now and then. Worth watching in any regard.

The most striking aspect of "Kaena: The Prophecy" were the CG visuals. If you enjoy that type of presentation and want to spend some time with this movie, you'll probably enjoy it -- otherwise, if that's not your cup of tea, you may want to see something else.

The characters are partially developed, so we know who they are, and when conflict occurs, we care somewhat about the outcome. However, the story was a definite drag on the movie. Perhaps it's my own pet peeves about names of things and people that are simply slung into the middle of a sequence, with no real explanation or background to accompany it. I know I prefer to understand what the characters are talking about, rather than have a new name dropped in "hey, look at this cool name for a person/character/device/planet I thought up." I don't mind if a character doesn't understand everything that's going on -- but I at least like to have a clue about what they're talking about.

That, plus the very stylized, heavy cgi presentation will probably limits the films wider appeal. Shots of flowing liquid and aspects of things that are difficult to tell whether they are liquid or solid are interesting up to a point -- but I know I have a low threshold for them.

Kirsten Dunst did a good job, since although I knew she did the voice of Kaena, it didn't make me think of her, as some voice actors do. The late Richard Harris' work was fine, but his voice was so distinctive I did think of him rather than the character at times. Much of the deficiencies in the writing are in his character's lines (since his character understands more).

Also for a movie that added "The Prophecy" to its title -- I expected more of a formal prophecy in the storyline.

So, overall, not terrible. CG-lovers will like it of course, but I wouldn't see people going in droves to see it.

OK, let's get the bad news out of the way right now. The plot is weak. There are some gaping silly holes in the story, numerous unexplained critter origins, shaky science, and a few threads that don't resolve at all. Automatic scoring deductions, across the board.

So what's good about the movie? First, the graphics. This is the natural evolution of French animation, of which there isn't nearly enough. Rene' Laloux's "Fantastic Planet" is one of the all-time animated psychotropic classics, and there is much in this film that pays homage to it: the visuals of the Axis "forest", the xenomorphic life forms, the conflict between master and slave races, etcetera. At the same time, the animation technique is the sort of hyper-real CGI used in Final Fantasy/Spirits Within, where each hair follicle is individually rendered. Like these two sibling films, Kaena abounds with brilliant bong hit graphics and mind-bending action sequences.

One common pitfall for animated features, particularly those of foreign origin, is the voice acting. To its immense credit, Kaena has a fairly decent dub, and I felt none of the accustomed grumpiness that comes with de-synced speech for any of the characters. The main characters were all well voiced. The IMDb cast list doesn't appear to mention all the voice actors, and I'm pretty sure the little kid was voiced by the same person who plays Shippo on Inuyasha (Jillian Michaels?). Sounds that way, at least.

However, while the voice acting is fine, the same cannot be said for the dialog. Long in exposition and short in character development, I get the feeling that this was an editor's nightmare. The balance between ensuring that people understand events and helping them care about the consequences of those events can be a difficult one to achieve. This has been the bane of science fiction films since the genre's inception. Unfortunately, dialog in Kaena finds a way to fail on both sides of the equation -- albeit at different times.

Without revealing any more details, I will say this much. The story tries to operate on a grand scale, but is undercut by the uneven development, jerky scene transitions, mediocre dialog, and the aforementioned plot-holes.

This is a film to be enjoyed as a raw sensory experience, not as a total cinematic product. It's not going to end up on any top-20-all-time lists and its pretensions to epic film status are undercut by its many weaknesses.

The overall effect, however, is extraordinary; it merits viewing as an exploration of what can now be accomplished with CGI. I enjoyed it immensely from this perspective, to the point where I was quite distracted from the numerous shortcomings.