RENAISSANCE

The French animated film Renaissance is probably the closest thing I've seen to a graphic novel come to life...

Lately, I've been really into reading graphic novels. Yes, sometimes I have to push smelly grown men aside to grab the interesting looking books from the shelves, but I'm not ashamed. I'm really starting to appreciate what a fascinating form of art these "illustrated novels" truly are. The French animated film Renaissance is probably the closest thing I've seen to a graphic novel come to life (despite being an original story written for the film). The images are an astonishing contrast of solid black and solid white, as though they've been pen-and-inked right onto the screen. The art direction, of a futuristic Paris circa 2054, is an astonishing mix of classic-architecture-meets-Blade Runner. The visual style looks like you played with a realistic image in Photoshop, sucked out the color, and set the contrast to the extreme. Renaissance is extremely cool looking.

But, unfortunately, the plot is unengaging, the characters are stereotypical, and the dialogue is meh.

A square-jawed cop named Karas (voiced in the English version by Daniel Craig) is a loose cannon. He doesn't always play by the rules, thumbing his nose to authority, but is always getting the job done. A young (of course hot) scientist named Ilona is mysteriously kidnapped on the way to her technology job at Avalon, a mega-corporation that conducts mysterious secret experiments on a quest to supposedly improve the "quality of life" (aka discover the key to immortality). Her hot sister Bislane (voiced by Catherine McCormack) joins up with Karas to find Ilona... before it is too late!

In the making-of extra on the DVD, the filmmakers discuss how they wanted to blend the world of Blade Runner with the film-noir crime ambiance of writer James Ellroy. In part, they succeeded. The world of Renaissance is eye-popping. Visuals from the film are burned in my brain—from a suspended corporate office with a glass floor (hundreds of feet above the ground... creepy); to an exciting car chase along the Seine via glass-topped tunnels, culminating in a foot-chase by the still-there Notre Dame; to just shots of the hero, walking through the cityscape in the rain.

But when you rub your eyes after Renaissance is over, you can't really argue that it was the visuals (at times eerily realistic, with motion capture movements on the human characters), that make the film. This is a movie where you may not enjoy or even comprehend the plot, but you can imagine showing it in the background at a party—with the sound turned off and techno music cranked up.