TO BE IN PARIS IN THE . . . WELL, FALL OF 2054 AD
The Paris of 2054 is a Byzantine labyrinth where all your movements are monitored and recorded. Like a shadow over everything stand's France’s largest multinational corporation . . . Avalon insinuating itself into every aspect of our daily live to sell their one and only product - youth and beauty. In there world of literally monochrome contrasts, where security is everywhere and unyielding laws govern, a brilliant young researcher with a secret that could change the future, Bislane Tasuiev, is kidnapped and Avalon wants her found at any cost. Avalon's CEO, Paul Dellenbach, pulls all the strings necessary to make sure that controversial hostage retrieval specialist Barthélémy Karas gets the case.
I hope that sounds as cool to you as it does to us, because it’s a film, it's adult animation it’s decidedly French adult animation and it's a futuristic computer-generated, neo-noir thriller and all around Blade Runner inspired ultra-stark black-n-white vision of the near-future called Renaissance that (in its English language incarnation at least) features the voice-talent of Layer Cake star and Casino Royale-era James Bond to be Daniel Craig, Braveheart's Catherine McCormack and Tomorrow Never Dies' Rupert Murdoch stand-in and now, I guess, portrayal of corperate sleaze go-to guy Jonathan Pryce.
Fans of Sin City and Polar Express will recognize the process used to achieve the film's immediately striking visual signature but here's the rub . . . Renaissance has been in development since before Sin City's Robert Rodriguez put his now infamous Sin City effects demo together or Robert Zemeckis started working on Polar Express. According to its makers, director Christian Volckman and screenwriters Mathieu Delaporte, Alexandre de La Patellière, Patrick Raynal and Jean-Bernard Pouy the concept that became Renaissance dates back to 1997 when Volckman and short film producer Aton Soumache met Marc Miance, the founder of Attitude Studio, a facility devoted entirely to creating high-end virtual characters.
"At the time, we [Attitude] were thinking of an animated CGI film shot entirely in black and white with no shades of gray set in Paris."
Volckman and Soumache apparently loved Miances idea because they decided to produce a demo that convinced both France's Channel 2 and French film distributor Pathé to pre-purchase the project. Earlier this year Renaissance scooped up a Best Picture award at the Annecy International film festival, so I guess that worked out for them.
It's due in U.S. theatre's on Sept 22.
Is it just me, or does cultural malaise go hand in hand with good filmmaking? These days near future dates make me feel old, I can remember looking forward to 1984. I don't know if 2054 is attainable to one day compare to this dytopian vision. Maybe if I had some good youth drugs...
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