Reviewed - Renaissance: This animated French film noir, which will remind many of Sin City, begins with a familiar shot of the Paris skyline.
The moon casts its light upon the classically contoured roofs of elegant apartment buildings. Then, to the escalating surprise of the viewer, the supposed camera moves down and down (and down) past a dizzying number of futuristic storeys until it reaches a dismal underworld beneath. If the story can live up to the opening visuals, then Renaissance will be one hell of a film.
Well, it can't. What we have, in plot terms, is a perfectly respectable dystopian thriller whose gentle swerves will surprise nobody who has seen Blade Runner, THX 1138 or any number of sci-fi films featuring sinister corporate monoliths.
It is Paris in the year 2054 and Ilona, a scientist working for a biotechnology conglomerate, has been kidnapped by persons unknown. Karas, a tough cop with all the usual social eccentricities, kicks and growls his way about the city as he attempts to locate the young woman.
It transpires that, while working on a cure for a rare disease that causes premature ageing, Ilona may have stumbled upon the key to immortality. Not surprisingly, this causes ripples in both underworld circles and respectable society.
The story may prove to be mundane, but the animation remains spectacular throughout. Director Christian Volckman employs a variation on the rotoscoping technique, shortly to be seen in Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly - whereby the performances of flesh-andblood actors are treated to look like cartoons.
Here, the images, very different from the woozy, drunken shapes of Linklater's film, are carved in stark monochrome. Puzzlingly, though the actors' lip movements suggest they delivered their lines in English, an entirely different gang of more famous performers gets to dub the dialogue. No matter. The films looks so startling that, despite the unsurprising development of its narrative, it remains diverting throughout. If Volckman can discover a decent writer for his next film he just might deliver a classic.
