Linkshoch Wonderful Movie

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

l_rawjalaurence The basic scenario for Sylvain Chomet's comedy-drama is reminiscent of that of SHINE (1994). A young man, the eponymous central character (Guillaume Goulx) in his early thirties demonstrates a higher-than-average talent for piano playing, but does not speak. Looked after by a pair of overbearing aunts (Bernadette Lafont, Hélène Vincent), he has little or no outlet for his talents. He discovers in the apartment below him an eccentric woman, Mme. Proust (Anne Le Ny), who administers a concoction to him, enabling him to indulge in fantasies as well as uncover the mysteries of his past.The plot is a straightforward one, dramatizing the ways in which we often deal with trauma by repressing it. Attila Marcel's concoction is nothing more than a means by which he learns to reconnect with it. What happened might have been unpleasant, but in the end he has to learn how to deal with it. Mme. Proust eventually passes away, and the apartment is taken over by someone else; but the experience has proved cathartic.What renders Chomet's film so entertaining are the settings, a series of suitable visual metaphors for the lives Marcel pursues. The apartment he shares with his aunts is perpetually spick-and- span: everything in the right place so that Attila can cope with life around him. The aunts believe that this is the best thing for him; as the film unfolds, we understand how they have imposed their will on him, as a way of compensating for their own spinsterhood. The seedy dance studio, where Attila plays the piano for young girls just beginning their careers, is both bare and impersonal; the only noteworthy item of furniture being the piano. This sums up the aridity of the young man's life; it's hardly surprising that he does not want to speak. And there is Mme. Proust's apartment, a positive riot of fauna and flora, with tatty furniture and a strange visitor M. Cuelho (Luis Rego) who always seems to be waking up from a trance. The confusion of her apartment expresses Attila's state of mind; it is only through the concoction that such confusions can be straightened out.The film comes to a predictable conclusion as we discover precisely what happened to the young man's parents. Perhaps he does not need to take the concoction any more; he seems to be 'cured,' at least temporarily. But director Chomet suggests that, if he wanted to take it once more, there would be nothing wrong. Even though it might be comprised of illegal drugs, it has a beneficial effect in the end.

Tom Dooley Paul is in his thirties, he is mute having seen his parents die when he was but two. Since then he has been brought up by his fabulously eccentric aunts and has become something of a virtuoso on the piano. Then a fascinating neighbour tells him that she can help him by using a concoction of herbal tea.He soon starts to see this Madame Proust regularly and starts regression therapy of sorts. She says that 'you can drown bad memories in a flood of tiny joys' – which is sage advice indeed. The film deals with the cycle of life, the past and a host of human issues. What unfolds is a beautiful film in terms of style and sentiment about his life and those around him, with so much thrown in that it seems to be endlessly inventive. Guillaume Gouix as Paul and Attila (his wrestling father) is superb – even more so when you consider that he is unable to speak. Everyone plays their roles to the limit and no one goes over the top to lose believability. This is just a wonderful film with music, taxidermy, tree hugging and a whole lot of love besides – one for French film fans and for those who like something a bit different, but in a really nice way.

kaptan nemo We have all memories; good or bad, funny or sad. In some point of view we are made of memories. This movie is all about memories and friendship and music, love of nature and joy of life. How come that an introvert "young" adult is not speaking for years? What is the real meaning of neighborhood? Could souls might be neighbors for each other? What is the real success in life? Attila Marcel is strongly recommended if you are interested with these questions and if you would to have a cup of "herbal" tea with healing effects...P.S.: There is a small scene after the end credits and a dedication, so don't leave the movie without listening credits soundtrack and last piece of the movie: Everybody could change.

allenrogerj Sylvain Chomet's first live action film is another exercise in homage and hyper-reality. It is in the same kind of slightly off-kilter world as his other films, like, but not quite like, our own. Paul, an aging infant prodigy, has one last chance to win a prize for young pianists before he stops being officially young. He has been mute since his parents' mysterious deaths when he was two and was raised by his mother's staid sisters, Anna and Annie, dance teachers, who control his life and have made him practise continually on the family's ancestral piano in a flat full of ancestral portraits when he is isn't playing at their dance school. Escaping from his birthday party, attended by his aunts' elderly friends, Paul encounters Mme Proust, an aging ukulele-playing hippie with a huge black deaf dog and no aspirations to musical virtuosity, who uses exotic tisanes (accompanied by madeleines, of course) to revive Paul's childhood memories and bring closure, in the best Hollywood Freudian way, to his problems. There is a destiny that shapes our ends, she explains, rough-hew them how we will, and that is what it does to Paul.Paul's repressed memories appear from an infant's brightly-coloured p.o.v. to the accompaniment of music his aunts would abhor, including seductive jazz-playing frog accordionists. In the end, Paul is an integrated man, an acclaimed virtuoso (if not on the piano), able to speak, a good father who does not repeat his own father's mistakes... Like Chomet's earlier films, this is a game of references and hallucinations and just as animated as they were, if in a different way.