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Anime noir

At last, a full-length animation strictly for adults
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 9th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
"She was bad. She was dangerous ..." There are a thousand tales in the naked city in the animated Renaissance.
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Over the past few years, cinemas have been packed with full-length animated films, though there’s been little that’s geared strictly for adults. The Pixar plate is piled with antique Mattel toys for childish adult nostalgia, while even more serious Japanese anime — from Hayao Miyazaki to hentai porn loops — still possess a kawaii, or “cute culture,” look to them, starting with the characters’ Betty Boop eyes (and Max Fleischer’s cartoons did have a major impact on Japanese culture).
Cuteness is also prevalent in two of the better recent animated films aimed primarily for adults: Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride and Sylvain Chomet’s wonderful The Triplets of Belleville, which opened with a hilarious homage to Fleischer’s Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons. But the 1970s rawness of a Fritz the Cat or cerebral depth of the French-Czech Fantastic Planet has been in short supply. That’s why Renaissance seems to herald a renaissance in adult-themed animation.
Renaissance

Directed by Christian Volckman
With the voices of Daniel Craig, Jonathan Pryce, Ian Holm, Catherine McCormack and Romola Garai

Christian Volckman’s cyberpunk mystery took six years to create, as the French animator/director used complicated motion-capture technology to create his film. It’s a sophisticated computer enhancement technique that turns 2-D into 3-D, creating such lifelike human movement as to lead one to occasionally forget that this is animation and not live-action.
Renaissance is anime noir, done almost completely in black and white to reproduce the chiaroscuro of Bogart and Mitchum noirs from the ’40s. The action is set in the Paris of 2054, a Blade Runner world that combines both futuristic technology and dystopic landscape: mean streets slicked with rain and lit by the new neon glare of high-tech television billboards.
Police detective Karas has been put on the case of a kidnapped scientist who was working on an important experiment for the all-powerful Avalon Corporation, which is headed by a sleazy oligarch named Paul Dellenbach. The scientist, a young woman named Ilona, had been working with a famous doctor, Jonas Muller, who had been attempting to find a cure for progeria, an aging disease that strikes children.
Karas’ few leads are culled from Ilona’s sister, Bislaine, a femme fatale as rave-girl, who has made a habit of keeping bad company. But Karas and Bislaine will come to depend upon each other, as the mystery of Ilona’s disappearance deepens. The investigation leads from rubbish-strewn back alleys to chic plexiglass boardrooms, where Karas will begin to suspect that there’s more to the story than anyone (including Bislaine) is willing to admit.
It is clearly evident that the crafting of Renaissance’s visually complex world would have taken more than half a decade to perfect. Unfortunately, the story line itself is rather dime-novel. The dialogue, too, is often just as cheap. Produced originally in French, it could be that the English version suffers from being put in the hands of a translator who has read more Erle Stanley Gardner than Chandler or Cain. Still, it’s an over-easy narrative for such hard-boiled graphics.
The dubbed-in English voices range from serviceable to stilted, often taking on the stiff cadences of a Jonny Quest episode. New Bond Daniel Craig takes on Karas commandingly enough, and there’s good support from veterans Jonathan Pryce as the conniving Dellenbach and Ian Holm as Dr. Jonas Muller. The women (Catherine McCormack’s Bislaine and Romola Garai’s Ilona) are the weakest links. For English speakers, it might be worth grabbing the original French version on DVD with English subtitles, so as not to contend with the script and vocal inadequacies.
Still, Volckman’s Renaissance is a visually dynamic film that seems to promise even more interesting approaches to cinema animation in the future. Even with its flaws, it’s never less than an audacious adult enterprise that quickly puts paid to “cute” in the first minutes of the film by offing a dog. There are no singing mice and teapots in this naked city — and high time, too.
    

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (9/05/2007):

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