The Illusionist

A hand-drawn animated film with almost no dialogue. The end of the 1950s. An ageing stage magician is finding it hard to get work; the halls want rock groups now and his act is out of date. He leaves Paris for small engagements in London, and from there for the north of Scotland. He performs in a village on a remote island where electricity has just arrived. There a young girl named Alice believes he really does magic and attaches herself to him. He cannot send her away. They move to Edinburgh. She wants everything she sees and he buys it for her; he does not say where the money comes from. All the pain of the film is in that relationship: the man exhausts himself to protect the girl's belief. The screenplay comes from a text Jacques Tati wrote years earlier and never filmed. There is an argument about who it was written for; some in Tati's family have said it concerns the daughter he kept away from. Sylvain Chomet directed. The visual language rests on hand drawing and the city of Edinburgh is drawn with great care. It was Oscar-nominated for animated feature. One of the loveliest works of recent years for anyone who likes hand-drawn animation and wordless storytelling. For a viewer expecting a cheerful animated film, this is sorrowful throughout and the ending offers no consolation.