Cannes 2012: Ernest and Celestine Review
you feel. With all the charm of Disney before it lost its spark and the bizarre creative nous of Studio Ghibli, Ernest and Celestine looks incredible. The minimalist sketching is, if you'll forgive me, 'old school', the 2D simplicity a defiant stand against any purported decline of hand-drawn animation. It looks full of exacting care, like pages ripped from a storybook. Rarely does cinema still instil a sense of wonder in the viewer - it's what you'll feel when you gaze upon the bustling underground mouse city or behold the sensational sequence in which winter turns to spring, the world transforming from a white expanse and bursting into colour and life. The musical score, too, is the sound of a simpler time. The orchestra sound as though they live in an age free of irony and sarcasm, creating a soundtrack happy to be happy. Ernest and Celestine is pleasant through-and-through, at its core a rather touching story of companionship between two very different animals. Celestine is wide-eyed and reckless, Ernest is grumpy and selfish, so of course there are the regular tribulations (Ernest tries to eat Celestine, before she endears herself to him by introducing him to a cellar full of confectionary) but you know what kind of ending there's going to be. It's predictable, but so what? You'll have too much fun to care that you sense where Ernest and Celestine is going. Like all great children's animation, it involves us adults too. It touches upon our baser instincts - all Ernest and Celestine are trying to do is survive in the world, and the need to be accepted is a key theme. But far from being psychologically-inclined, Ernest and Celestine is just a cartoon that takes you back to gleeful innocence. If the ending wraps things up a bit too neatly, fine. In a post-Shrek (tired pop culture-referencing) and post-Pixar (technologically-prioritising) world, Ernest and Celestine is a rare type of animated film. It seems out of place in our time - it doesn't want to be cynical like the rest of us - but simultaneously quite perfect for a jaded culture. It's something to take the family to that you yourself can get lost in. Hopefully we'll see more of its kind. If we don't, we've got this one.