Gobelins: “Un tour de Manege (Merry Go Round)”
Watching Un tour de Manège (Merry Go Round) is like flipping through the pastel drawings of a child—but coming away with clean fingers. Directed by Nicolas Anthanè, Brice Chevillard, Alexis Liddell, Francoise Losito, and Mai Nguyen, this latest Gobelins short is an impressionistic tale of being lost and found, as experienced through a child’s eyes.
Saying so much by doing so little, Un tour de Manège gets it right. It’s tactile: full of tonal and shading effects, chalky, and sprinkled in baby-powder. It’s innocent: tapping into the existential dramas of childhood, and like many works from the Gobelins school, crystallizing emotions like fear and loneliness in graphical simplicity. These moments are brief, but define a coming of age for the character, and help to humanize the inherent flaw by providing an escape from reality. Liberation by imagination.
The narrative is simple, buttressed by the fundamentals of good storytelling, and follows the same three-act structure documented at the turn of the 19th century. Much is left unexplained. The audience is left to fill in the blanks, without papering over the poetic nuance.
Thursday, November 5th 2009 at 12:31 pm |
I’d love to see a gobelins full feature animation film.
Thursday, November 5th 2009 at 12:48 pm |
You and me, both.
Thursday, November 5th 2009 at 1:39 pm |
me three.
Friday, November 6th 2009 at 1:13 pm |
I’m about to go back to school…
I agree with franco_bt
Sunday, November 8th 2009 at 5:28 pm |
wow!!1
so beautiful!!!
love it!!
Monday, November 9th 2009 at 6:38 am |
wonderfull! what nice colors!
Monday, November 9th 2009 at 8:37 am |
A brilliant and beautiful film. I had the pleasure of working with Mai Nguyen very briefly last year and she is very very talented. The level of creative invention, art direction, and sheer technical skill coming out of gobelins and supinfocom is simply amazing.