French Film Festival 2025
French master of animation, Sylvain Chomet, brings his immense talent to the 2025 film chosen to open of this year’s French Film Festival UK that took place at Edinburgh’s Cameo cinema. Known for the wonderfully dark Belleville Rendezvous (Les Triplettes de Belleville) and the gentler, more benign but equally fabulous tribute to Jacques Tati, The Illusionist (l’Illusioniste) set in Edinburgh and wider Scotland, Chomet turns his hand to a biopic about French playwright, filmmaker and novelist Marcel Pagnol.
While unable to attend in person for what French Film Festival Director, Richard Mowe, described as ‘une avante première’, Chomet appeared on film where he gave an overview of his approach to creating what is a series of revelations on the life of a French cultural hero as well as a marvel of animation skills from his superb direction and the multitude of credited animators involved in the making.
As is often the case, the original French title reflects the film’s content better than the English translation because in this exposé of a life, many of whose elements may be largely unknown, the chronological narrative is interspersed by the presence of Pagnol’s 12-year-old self that is ever present in his mind. This young boy, who is always at pains to please his mother, sees him through his not untroubled life shown with great humanity across this exquisitely made film.
The recognisable intricately created cityscapes of Marseille and Paris, along with the capturing of every gesture to minute perfection, such as the melancholic look in Pagnol’s features and physical movements of the characters being fluid and believable, makes the film’s attention to detail nothing short of astonishing. The signature Chomet feature of showing actual movie footage alongside the animation, means in this case seeing stars of the time in their heyday such as Fernandel and Raimu while posters showing Parisian life, that were such a big part of stylised French world, come alive in cheeky, comic movement.
From the start, we learn that Pagnol was a man who was alive to the importance of a person’s native tongue, in his case Marseillaise, as it is the language of the heart that speaks at levels more formal speech can miss, his linguistic terroir. A sensitive man of principal, he was an inventor and pioneer involved in the launching of the ‘talkies’ when silent films were seen as sacrosanct. He was also man with the foresight to see the damage to a culture through the loss of its language or local dialect and the use of the distinctive Marseille accent is evident from actors Laurent Lafitte, Géraldine Pailhas, Thierry Garcia and Anaïs Petit who voiced such characters.
Alert viewers will spot a discreet homage to the very Monsieur Tatischeff in a blink-and -you’ll-miss-him cameo role!
In the year that marks 130 years since Marcel Pagnol’s birth, as well as the start of the legendary Gaumont Studios, this glorious film more than lives up to the adjective in its English title – c’est á dire, magnificent!
Screened with English subtitles
Running time: 90 mins
Age recommendation: 12 +
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 