Funan: GKIDS’ Next Masterwork of International Animation

Parenting is so bourgeoisie. Under the Khmer Rouge, there was no need for such old-fashioned capitalist conventions. They took care of child-rearing, splitting up families for years. It was cradle-to-grave socialism, with an emphasis on the grave. Chou and Khuon will try to survive the camps and endure years of separation from their young son Sovanh in Cambodian-French filmmaker Denis Do’s remarkable animated feature Funan, which opens today in New York.

Chou and Khuon never really saw the rise of Angkor coming, but there is very little they could have done to prepare. Like everyone else, they suddenly found themselves on a forced march from Phnom Penh to the countryside. In the chaos, they lose sight of Sovanh, but that hardly matters to the Khmer Rouge guards, because they would have been split up soon enough anyway. However, Chou finds absolutely no solace in that fact. She bitterly resents Khuon’s acquiescence, insisting he should have deserted their cadre to find their son. Their relationship will fray, but they still must stick together to have any hope of survival.

Funan is visually stunning and emotionally devastating. Do uses the lush, verdant Cambodian landscapes as an ironic (and enormously cinematic) counterpoint to the cruelty and madness that surrounds his characters. Family members die with grim regularity, but it just rips your heart out each time it happens. Technically, Do keeps most of the violence off-screen, but certainly not the suffering and tragedy.

The artistry of Do and his team of animators is so clearly evident, nobody could seriously deny it. Instead, some critics uncomfortable with Funan’s forthrightness have tagged it “cliched,” but the truth is quite the contrary. Chou and Khuon do not suffer nobly and stoically. They hurt each other and act badly, but still remain bound by love. Really, this is an unusually honest and complex portrayal of human emotions under extreme and prolonged stress.

In all honesty, if GKIDS does not finally win an Oscar with Funan than the Academy should just level with everyone and change their name to “The Official Disney/Pixar Awards.” It is an important and, in some ways, timely film (considering the recent vogue for socialism among millennials and presidential candidates), but it is even more fundamentally a work of great artistic merit and humanism.

(As an aside, Do previously made The Ribbon, an achingly beautiful and tragic four-minute short film set amid Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Hopefully, GKIDS can pair them together at some screenings, as they have sometimes done with their shorter features, because both films truly deserve to be seen.)

Regardless, this is genuinely vibrant animation, in service of a deeply haunting film. Very highly recommended, Funan opens today (6/7) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Animation First: Renaissance

Life is cheap in the dystopian future, but it still has value. Not much, but some. However, the tenuously balanced social order faces a threat to its equilibrium. Brilliant genetic researcher Ilona Tasuiev has been kidnapped, presumably by shadowy forces who want to control the questionable “playing God” technology she has developed. Dogged copper Bathélémy Karas will do his best to rescue her in Christian Volckman’s Renaissance (trailer here), which screens during FIAF’s Animation First: New York’s French Animation Festival.

Due to childhood trauma, Karas is not inclined to stand on ceremony, or search warrants, when innocents are endangered. The Tasuiev Sisters had similarly chaotic childhoods, before Ilona’s scientific genius was recognized and scooped up by the pharma-chemical multinational Avalon. Bislane Tasuiev had been her protector while they lived in the anarchic Eastern European region, but she was living off her sister in Paris, like a parasitic club kid.

Feeling a kinship based on their comparable backgrounds, as well as a mutual attraction, Karas pledges to Tasuiev he will recover her missing sister, safe and sound. As he pursues the investigation, the cop will interview her venerated mentor at Avalon, Dr. Jonas Muller, and their scummy boss, Paul Dellenbach. Clearly, the road to Tasuiev will criss-cross Avalon several times over.

Employing rotoscope mo-cap techniques that were pretty cutting edge for 2006, Renaissance is a strikingly noir work of animation that is even more visually distinctive than Alois Nebel. Unfortunately, the narrative is mostly just a string of loosely connected dystopian clichés. (If you think a corporate behemoth like Avalon is a dubious trustee of potentially dangerous technology, then just try the government.)

Still, in terms of world-building, Renaissance is amazing. You can clearly see elements of Metropolis in the design of 2054 Paris. Even French auto giant Citroën contributed, by projecting how their cars would look fifty years into the future. This is truly auteurist animation, so it is rather depressing Volckman has yet to release a proper new feature during the nearly twelve years since its initial theatrical opening.

The ever-so ironically titled Renaissance is a fitting selection for the celebration of French animation, because it is worth seeing, just to see its amazing visuals. Arguably, Volckman dramatically utilizes reflections and odd POV perspectives more than just about any prior animated film. It is actually fair to call it “visionary”—imperfectly plotted, but visionary in its execution. Highly recommended for animation connoisseurs, Renaissance screens tomorrow (2/4) as part of Animation First, which also includes the excellent Red Turtle and Day of the Crows, as well as the classic Fantastic Planet.