April and the Extraordinary World
Directed by Christian Desmares & Franck Ekinci
Produced by Michel Dutheil, Franck Ekinci and Marc Jousset
Screenplay by Franck Ekinci & Benjamin Legrand
Starring Marion Cotillard, Philippe Katerine, Jean Rochefort, Olivier Gourmet, Marc-André Grondin and Bouli Lanners
French-language animation is almost always worth seeking out. It doesn’t have to be specifically from France: some of the best come from Canada and Belgium. But they have this certain je ne sais quoi about them, a tone and an attitude that is unique to greater French culture. The best of them are the equal of the great movies from Studio Ghibli.
Examples abound: La Planète sauvage (Fantastic Planet), La Vieille Dame et les Pigeons (The Old Lady and the Pigeons), Earnest and Celestine, Le Roi et l’Oiseau (The King and the Owl) Persepolis and Les Tripplettes de Belleville (The Triplets of Belleville). Any of them qualify as both classic and unforgettable.
Avril et le Monde truqué is a 2015 joint effort by studios in Canada, France and Belgium, portrays a girl and her cat in a krapnatz steampunk world. Back in 1870, Napoleon III wants his scientists to build a indestructible super-soldier so he can crush the Prussians. After some tinkering the scientists, led by Gustave Franklin, come up with a pair of talking komodo dragons who are indestructible, but piss-poor soldiers, and, having discovered the joys of awareness and existential despair, are not even as ferocious as komodos usually are. Furious, Emperor Nappy III orders these indestructible beasts destroyed, but the soldiers he wants to replace demonstrate the perils of illogic by screwing it up and the dragons, a breeding pair, natch, escape. So does Franklin, who wisely surmises that a pissed Napoleon is a dangerous Napoleon.
The Emperor decides science has failed him, and orders all the scientists out of France. He sues for peace with Prussia, and establishes the House of Bonaparte. After that, it’s Napoleons all the way down. (Yes, there was a Napoleon II: he reigned part of France for 16 days at the age of four, was deposed and died at the age of 21, possibly of existential despair.) We’re up to Nappy v.4.0 by the time Avril is born.
In the meantime, scientists all around the world have been vanishing, and since they have, the world is still getting by on coal and steam power. We meet April and her talking cat, Darwin, in 1931 when she’s about 10 years old. She has a talking cat, not just because she’s in an animated movie but because her parents, Prosper and Annette Franklin, have been carrying on the genetic uplift work of their father, Gustave. Paris has seen better days; France used up all her coal and has now burned all the trees, because all mechanical instruments are steam-driven. In addition to a barren landscape, the air quality is appalling. The gendarmes get wind of the presence of scientists in the city of gaslight, and raid their home. Gustave escapes (he’s had practice) and the parents vanish in a big tramcar explosion. April and Darwin manage to survive the blast.
Fast forward to 1941, a world where the Germans are behaving themselves but the air is so bad that it’s impossible to smoke a cigarette. Darwin is dying, since cats’ lungs aren’t well equipped to deal with dense clouds of hot wet hydrocarbons. Avril has a snow globe, a keepsake from her parents that contains something other than water. Some of it spills into Darwin’s mouth, and some time later, he is suddenly hale and hearty, the very picture of a healthy and happy cat, except it’s possible that he has read Henri Bergson and now doubts his own feasibility. But since he is now invulnerable, he has no choice but to live with doubt. Thus proving that Bergson is wrong, and non-human entities can be infused with human souls. Problem, entirely of my own imagining, solved.
If this all sounds like a rather witless anime, remember—it’s French. It’s much more sophisticated, and affects a jauntier air in the face of horrific conditions, then one will find in most anime.
Eventually we learn what became of Avril’s parents, and Gustave, and even the komodo dragons. And how they outwit the gendarmes of Napoleon V.
We get to meet Darwin again in 2001, since he’s apparently immortal despite a case of feline ennui, where he is now living, on a green and lush Moon. Those ‘disappeared’ scientists have been busy.
Available on Amazon Prime.