A Cat in Paris (Une Vie de Chat), or: The freedoms and burdens that come with animation

A Cat in Paris (Une Vie de Chat) (2010)

Directed by Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol

***SPOILERS***

Until form in film ceases to exist, memorable filmmakers will establish their presence through a definitive style. That notion has never been more welcomed (and prevalent) than in regards to the ever-expansive world of animation. The first true breakthroughs can be traced back to the early Disney days of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, but as technology booms, so does the recent influx of expanding the form. The importance of form in animation has especially taken new meaning as technology and the thirst for diversity expands, as Pixar revolutionized computer animation with Toy Story, Nick Park brought claymation to every home television with Wallace & Gromit, and Sylvian Chromet stripped his films (Triplets of Belleville, The Illusionist) of any dialogue all Jacques-Tati style. And while those films will be remembered for a variety of reasons, one aspect remains non-debatable: they’re all an exercise in form.

Could you imagine “The Claw” from Toy Story capturing the audience’s breath outside the CGI animation world? The slowly dropping crane carries an entirely different weight with three-dimensional visuals as it descends upon the audience (and those little green aliens). The scene carries the same fleeting and expansive scope as any Disney film, but not even the free-flying Rescuers from Down Under could capture such a perfect mix of suspense and whimsicality:

Could any animated character’s head pop through his sweater vest more hilariously or gracefully than Wallace in The Wrong Trousers? The physics of Wallace and Gromit’s world lends their films an identity that seems unmatchable to any other form of animation in terms of honest comedy and portraying an environment:

More separated from animation than any of these films is Triplets of Belleville, which is so focused on mood, atmosphere, and surroundings that it dictates its characters in ways animation never has and all silent films strove to do (and Jacques Tati often did). Never once does Chromet abandon his form—a go-for-broke method that can be observed in the aforementioned films: a constant attention to detail and building the imagined world at hand, creating fascination through fantasies beyond our grasp. Take this clip from Triplets of Belleville to grasp how idiosyncratic Chromet’s disciplined style truly is:

Now with the emergence of A Cat in Paris, we see a new form of animation taking shape:

Strangely enough, what such a blend of sophistication and childlike night strolling portrays is a rarity in animation: the crime novel. With a light French piano tune playing alongside a burglar’s mission, A Cat in Paris seems less Puss in Boots and more a cross between Le Cercle Rouge and Jour de Fête. Heists, crime, and burglaries are rarely portrayed in animation with anything more than buffoonery, and albeit Victor’s (Jean Benguigui) goofy gangster squad, A Cat in Paris feels drenched in serious crime novel affection, with enough light touches to allow the childlike aspirations to shine through for our main character Zoé (Oriane Zani).

What separates Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s unique film from its animation predecessors lies in the (literally) eye-popping animation, but also what the form allows the film to achieve. Even Toy Story, which revolutionized animation, was steeped in traditional genre conventions. The action/adventure aspects of Toy Story were nothing new, despite the fact that Pixar took those aspects to new heights. This was another reason Triplets of Belleville was welcomed so wholeheartedly: it didn’t feel constrained to traditional child pandering. But A Cat in Paris does feel like a film made for children, to the point where the thieving Nico (Bruno Salomone) becomes a heroic figure and his burglaries are placed in a sympathetic light, while Victor is depicted as a murderous lunatic. And despite the reservations many critics hold over such a finely-drawn contrast, A Cat in Paris’ form allows such a dynamic to play freely to children, where stealing is never encouraged, but instead used to define the humanistic differences between Nico and Victor.

A Cat in Paris is hand-drawn, but it owns a strange presence, since it was polished off through the use of computers (which unfortunately seems all too inevitable these days). But through computers does A Cat in Paris gain its core identity, as its foreground characters and props gain an eye-popping residence in relation to the ominous and crooked background, stuffed full of shapely buildings of different sizes and the quiet, shadow-heavy rooms of Zoé’s home. Such a picture gives A Cat in Paris’ tracking shots an ephemeral quality that offsets the brevity of the film’s broader crime elements. In what seems to be the film’s true claim to fame, the characters of A Cat in Paris are dictated by the world drawn for them, with their thinly slitted eyes mischievously peering over their own shoulders; their lanky bodies allowing them to defy the laws of gravity, giving Nico a Stretch Armstrong body he employs to climb in and out of buildings during heists; their environments—full of wiggling clouds and clever cats—setting the balanced and light tone for their dangerous world in ways that Jean-Pierre Melville strove for in Bob le Flambeur. The point when Nico adorns night-vision goggles brings forth the film’s most memorable scene, separating itself much in a way the previous videos displayed: a black screen featuring the characters in white, as Nico slips in and out of the gangsters’ reach alongside the ever-present cat, bringing forth a unique style of animation that enhances the film's crime aspirations.

The only burden presented by A Cat in Paris’ animation that cripples the story and its characters is an aspect that Gagnol believes empowers his film. He notes how A Cat in Paris is “complimented with poetic licenses,” which in turn allow the “characters to transform themselves, to fly away, to achieve impossible movements.” Such a statement is true of the characters’ physical movements, which compliments the chimerical touch on the film’s darker genre tones, but it also fails to assess the characters’ psyches. Gagnol and Felicioli have mistaken their artistic freedom—an endearing aid accompanied with animation—for narrative freedom. The storytelling whimsicality of the film allows the characters to appear a bit less refined, but it doesn’t excuse them from being incongruent to the form. The form allows characters to transform their movements, which plays a key role in depicting and carrying out the crime elements at hand, but defying the laws of gravity is different from being illogically capricious. Victor takes the form of an octopus in Jeanne’s (Dominique Blanc) mind, relating her hate towards the man who killed her husband. But such a psychologically gripping image holds less weight alongside the nanny’s perfume trail, which whirls around the screen like its own character, yet seems completely foreign and out of place in these characters’ world—much like Melville’s strange and alcohol-induced scene in Le Cercle Rouge (by far his most overrated and flawed work). Using the octopus as a manifestation, the perfume trail represents the directors' desire to recreate a Persepolis-esque re-imagining of surroundings, yet the Iranian film incorporated such manifestations into Marji's altered outlook on adolescence, never once utilizing the freedoms animation presents for empty and shallow spectacles of art.

A Cat in Paris’ setting, despite owning fantastically moving characters, is steeped in reality due to genre conventions, which it’s far too hell-bent on reshaping instead of adhering to. In addition, such a psychological display is depicted for Jeanne and nobody else, which seems a lost opportunity for a film that wishes to blend crime and a children’s story…and owns a child as its leading lady. So while A Cat in Paris seems resilient and disciplined in its aspirations for reshaping the crime genre, separating it from the Disney and Dreamworks films of the industry, it doesn’t seem as wholeheartedly adamant as Toy Story, Wallace & Gromit, or Triplets of Belleville in terms of form. For those films count on the form to relate the characters and the mood, while A Cat in Paris’ utilization of its form seems resolutely one-note in its search for balance. But rarely do we find a film that looks like nothing else, suggesting Gagnol and Felicioli aren’t the instant-success story of Toy Story, but a sign of greater things to come.