Renaissance

Animation always seems to be fringe. In Japan, this might not be the case, but in Europe and much more so in the USA animation has a big fat "KIDS" tag on it. France is probably one of the more comic-liberal countries, home of classics as Tin-Tin, Asterix, Lucky Luke, Valereon and so on(if you've never read these, it's not too late. There's no upper-age limit on them and they don't carry the nerd-stigma of DC or Marvel) It seems natural a movie like this one pops up in France. It suits my prejudiced image of the French as art-loving, anti-USA-oriented and talented movie-makers. Luckily there's also "A scanner darkly" out there to suppress that view - seems art is pretty much international.

Anyway, as you might have gathered Renaissance is artsy and French. If you're a normal person you will get scared by this. There's no need for that however! Beneath it's cool, sleek cel-shaded appearance there's a good thriller and a good movie overall.

That was one of my fears for this movie. It's so easy turning the spectacular animation to a gimmick, much like Sony & C:o are doing with their Pixar rip-offs. I was expecting a confusing, sometimes boring and not very engaging movie, but luckily I was wrong.

I would have enjoyed it anyway for the neo-noir stuff, but it was good that it was worthwhile on that level as well. NOTE: I've seen the French dub which was OK as far as I could see. English might be more interesting what with Craig and everything.

A final word of praise to the animation. It was awesome. Futuristic, well-crafted, nice camera-work, smart solutions(Eyes for example looked very good, which is hard to do) and so visually stunning I felt like bursting out "This is so damn impressive!". Then again, I really like animation and I appreciate the effort the studio put down, so my verdict is a bit biased.

Good movie anyway, definitely lives beyond it's "gimmick".

A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Blade Runner, Sin City and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow – if you are a fan of any of these then this will be well worth checking out.

French animation project 'Renaissance' took seven years to make on a shoestring budget and tonight I finally got to see it at a private screening for the International Film Festival in Stockholm. My spontaneous reaction is awe; my further reflection is 'huh, neat' and closer analysis regrettably gets a resounding 'meh'. It is a gorgeous science fiction triumph on the surface, but scratch it or even poke it a little and its unnecessarily complex plot becomes glaringly apparent, as do the flat characters.

Nevertheless it is clear that the people at Onyx films have done something spectacular with the aforementioned surface. The visuals are staggering. They have used live action motion capture fitted into key-frame animation, with stark jet black and bright white contrasts and a heavily shadowed rotoscoped background. For those of you who are not down with the 'technical lingo', the film looks like a fully-animated Sin City. Its fluid, transparent, dark and stylized template is complemented by great lurid lightning. It's a vision. Yet much credit is also due to the crisp sound effects that take the form of humming futuristic weapons, suspenseful music, heavy raindrops and glass shards breaking. It's every tech-nerd's wet dream...

The film zooms in on an eerily-lit, bleak, futurescape Paris in which a major corporation called 'Avalon' has begun to interweave in the lives of the citizens with surveillance (think the fluid transparent screens from Minority Report) and genetic engineering. The latter leads to a mysterious kidnapping of young researcher Ilona (voiced by the lovely Romola Garai). Cut to our hard-boiled cop-on-suspension and protagonist Karas (Daniel Craig) – a man who takes the law into his own hands – who is assigned the case of finding and retrieving Ilona. During this case, he is being aided by Illona's sister with whom he also begins a love affair. A very half-assed love affair, if I may say so.

The world of Renaissance is remarkable. Director Christian Volckman takes a fair jab at melting the noir themes and the result is an urban jungle filled with cads, rats, femme fatales and lonely detectives that hide in the shadows of the seedy slum. The problem is that the creators undoubtedly felt the need to have extremely clear and spelled-out archetypes in the story, or the film would have been "too surreal" for mainstream audiences, owing to its lurid animation format. It follows then that we have a multitude of clichéd characters such as evil-laughing villains, sleazy crime bosses and butch tough-chicks who blow smoke every chance they get. It shoves noir in our faces, and it isn't necessary.

What is worse is that the dialogue is a little contrived. It seems as though every line exists for the sole reason of propelling the plot. This is nothing fatal because the plot is so complex once it gets going that it needs some clear direction. Daniel Craig helps here too by bringing a no-nonsense attitude to his hard-edged cop character. At one point in Renaissance, he is seen in a vivid car-chase that surely is one of the most adrenaline-pumping and top notch sequences of the film. Unfortunately, the novelty of the sci-fi visuals have worn off post this car chase and 'Renassaince' could benefit from being slightly shorter. In summary, a very interesting but flawed futuristic comic book experience.

7 out of 10

Set in 2054 Paris, Renaissance has Daniel Craig voicing our protagonist, a (surprisingly) renegade cop investigating the kidnapping of a woman, after she disappeared from a club. His plight is further complicated when he uncovers seedy information about Avalon, the city's biggest company, who may have something to do with her disappearance. This relatively uninspiring tale of one man's search to uncover the truth behind a global conglomerate's surge towards everlasting youth and beauty is told through an interesting choice of cinematography and style: a mixture of rotoscope and fluid animation, all done in black and white palette. Whilst this initially looks relatively impressive, the novelty of it wears off fast, and inevitably looks unimpressive. It is certainly not a patch on similarly styled films of the past such as A Scanner Darkly (2006) or Sin City (2005). Fans of video games will get the feeling they are watching one really long cut-scene. The plot, possessing whatever little resonance it has, is done no favours by the completely clunky dialogue, delivered as monotonously as you'd like from the voice talent. It's a shame because there were things I really wanted to like about Renaissance. The only times it feels like really clicking in to second gear are the all too brief action scenes. There's a half-decent shootout within a green house, and a rather cartoonish car chase. But the characters are all far too hackneyed and one-dimensional: the blabbering scientist, the rogue cop, the femme fatale, the cackling bad guy, sprightly vodka drinking Russians, believe me – they all make an appearance. This certainly isn't a patch on Anime Manga, nor does it posses any of the depth that made Ghost In The Shell a three-dimensional experience. An intriguing, if inevitably unsatisfying experience.

First things first, this movie is achingly beautiful. A someone who works on 3D CG films as a lighter/compositor, the visuals blew me away. Every second I was stunned by what was on screen As for the story, well, it's okay. It's not going to set the world on fire, but if you like your futuristic Blade Runner-esquire tales (and who doesn't?) then you will be fine.

I do have to say that I felt the voice acting was particularly bland and detracted from the movie as a whole. I saw it at the cinema in English, but I am hoping that there is a French version floating around somewhere.

Definitely worth seeing.

Paris in 2042 and an employee of the health & beauty giant Avalon goes missing. Her employer wants her found urgently and the case is assigned to a jaded policed captain called Karas. Karas teams up with Bislane, the sister of the missing scientist and together they find connections between Avalon, buried research, underworld bosses and a discovery that Avalon is frantic to get its hands on.

Renaissance came to me with reviews that praised the style but noted that the story limited how good the film was as a final product. I tried not to watch it with this in mind but it was difficult because the collected wisdom is correct in this case and this is just how the film plays out. The plot is a slow starter mainly because the start is where the characters and depth is supposed to come in, with the "action" and reveals coming later. Unfortunately but perhaps unsurprisingly the film doesn't have this depth early on and it didn't really engage me, leaving the potentially complex plot to slightly confuse me while also failing to grab my attention. This changes as the film goes on and things become clearer and I did get more interested in the second half on the way to a solid ending for this type of thing.

Obviously the main selling point of the film is the animation and the visual style. In this regard the film is rather superficial until you get into it, then after a while it is cool and broody, full of shadow and atmosphere. Such a shame then that with all the cool visuals, we are given English cast that deliver such flat and dull performances by contrast. Craig is a distinctive voice of course but he seems to focus on this rather than working on his character. Holm is a bit better and appears to be putting a bit of effort into it but Pryce and others drift by without having a lot of material to work with. Always nice to hear Sosanya's tones but she has a tiny part.

Renaissance is very much the product of the approach that made it. Visually it is impressive with oodles of style but the story, although it gets better, is not as engaging as I was hoping for and the performances are surprisingly and disappointingly flat.