www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/chi-azur-asmar-review- 0102jan02,0,1289140.story
chicagotribune.com By Michael Phillips Tribune critic January 2, 2009 Is it too early to announce the most beautiful film of 2009? Two days into the new year, it's hard to imagine a more transporting cinematic experience coming our way than "Azur & Asmar," an animated feature from the French writer-director Michel Ocelot. "Azur & Asmar" got a very warm reception at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, in the Directors' Fortnight series, and as is often the case with the vagaries of international distribution, it has taken a long time for the film to land in Chicago. But here it is, for a week at the Siskel Film Center, and any aficionado of animationof vibrantly realized storytelling, in any genrewill be seduced by a wealth of sights and sounds. Warning: If you see "Slumdog Millionaire" in the same week as Ocelot's film, your eyes may never recover from the retina-splitting color intensity of the imagery. The story is original, though thematic references range from Persian art and architecture and the "Arabian Nights" fables to Shakespeare's "Pericles." In an unspecified Western land, two boys are raised as brothers. Asmar and his birth mother are strangers in a strange land, speaking both Arabic and English, making the best of their circumstances under the shadow cast by the taciturn, coldhearted master of the house. The master's son, Azur, adores his surrogate mother's tales from her homeland, of a magical sprite imprisoned in a cavern. The boys' relationship is thorny but hardy, full of fights and forgiveness. "I look like an angel," says the fair-skinned, blue-eyed Azur. "My country is better than this place," counters the Arabic- speaking Asmar (Azur speaks a bit himself). Then the dark-skinned mother and son are banished from the home. Years later Azur crosses the Mediterranean to find the dream land he relished, through his surrogate mother's tales, as a child. Shipwrecked, himself now a stranger in a strange land, Azur pretends to be blindhis blue eyes are considered evil by the localsand makes an uneasy alliance with a beggar, himself an Anglo immigrant, who serves as Azur's introduction to this land of saffron and gorgeous tiles. There's plenty more, involving a delightfully young and confident princess (no simpering, passive archetype here), a reunion between Azur and Asmar and Asmar's mother, a quest and some splendid leaps into fairy tale realms, populated by rainbow-colored oversize birds (the preferred mode of transport in this story's later passages) and a bright red lion with even brighter blue claws. "Azur & Asmar" travels from the "real" to the mythical, fluidly. Ocelot adapted his French- and Arabic-language film into English and Arabic, and in both versions the smattering of Arabic is not subtitled. It was the correct choice: As Azur feels his way through his disorienting surroundings, his momentary confusion become ours. Ocelot has cited France's tortured relationship with Algeria as an inspiration for his story. Yet he doesn't pin anything down culturally here or reduce his story to a tolerance lesson. The storytelling's so vivid and sure, and the computer animation so fabulously brocaded and detailed, you never get that "good-for-you" taste. It's a feast, as well as a deepening of the shadow puppetry techniques and richly saturated hues of Ocelot's previous films, which include "Kirikou and the Sorceress" and "Princes & Princesses." A final word, about the score. Gabriel Yared's music is as subtly satisfying as Ocelot's designs are fantastic. If more film musicin animation or in live-actionworked such atmospheric wonders, the world would be a better place. Early in the story, Azur is struggling through lessons in fencing, riding and dancing. "What I ask for is grace," sighs his dance instructor. "What I get is porridge." In any given year, a filmgoer consumes a lot of animated porridge. And then, occasionally, along comes a delicacy on the order of "Azur & Asmar."
