“I think animated films are dead,” says Sebastian Laudenbach.
This is the statement of the famous director and painter, whose film will be released in 2023 Linda’s chicken! It won a César Award. He’s catching up Hollywood Reporter Before the premiere of his latest film, Viva Carmen – Inspired by Georges Bizet’s beloved opera – Croisette hypnotizes with its lively animation and imaginative storytelling.
To make his point, the festival organizer should mention his mother tongue. “In French, it’s the same word to say [you are] Finish something and kill something. “It’s very powerful. I was influenced by unfinished drawings, unfinished drawings. I was very influenced by unfinished drawings,” says Laudenbach. When something is completely gone, it can be beautiful, but it can also be dead. So, just in case Viva CarmenLaudenbach’s goal was clear: “not to finish the film.”
You wouldn’t know that the film, according to its director, is incomplete. The product of this poetically described creative approach is simply stunning: the film set in Seville adapts Bizet’s story by dramatizing the life of a children’s choir, focusing primarily on the group’s leader, Belén, and her fellow orphan, Salvador. In 1845, Salvador – along with the rest of the city – became abuzz with captivating gypsy women. When a talented knife grinder hints at a future for his razor-sharp blades and predicts a tragic fate for Carmen at the hands of Private José, Salvador rallies a band of misfit street kids to challenge the unyielding threads of fate.
For Oudenbach, Viva Carmen It was always about attracting the largest possible audience. “I know we can’t change the world through a film, but maybe speaking to children, young audiences – [the opera] Carmen is just a story for adults – […] It’s a way to make this story simpler and more accessible. He’s well aware that the tale isn’t the easiest thing to sell to kids, considering Carmen’s widely known fate, but this struggle with failure is exactly the message he hopes to send to young audiences — those lucky enough to see the film on the Croisette, but also theatergoers in December, when the film has a wide release.
“Normally, kids have a task, and they succeed,” he says. “But here, that’s not the case. They failed, but after failing, [they can think]: ‘What can we do?’ What’s next? Maybe we can change the world? “
Laudenbach can’t talk about the film without talking about the work of his team, including producer Pierre-Henri Léon, who first came up with the idea of adapting the opera, graphic designer Cyril Pedrosa, head of character design Ilya Gobbi-Mayvelque, and production designer Elodie Remy. He says they created an incomplete piece of cinema, full of ambiguity. “Having a mystery when you’re a kid, but also when you’re an adult, is a beautiful thing,” he says.
He admits that the possibility of the first offer Viva Carmen In Cannes it’s a bit daunting. But Laudenbach is ready to send Carmen and the children out into the world, away from the opera’s elite circles: “I work on this film every day, but now it no longer belongs to me. So I look at it – I look at it, but it’s like a person to me – and I want to tell it to grow up and meet people. It would have been a good first step.”
