Six Clips From Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist

Over the past year, we’ve discussed on the podcast, and here on the website, the upcoming animated film from French animator Sylvain Chomet, The Illusionist. The Illusionist is based on a story from Jacques Tati (Playtime, Mon Oncle, Trafic, M. Hulot’s Holiday)

THE ILLUSIONIST is a story about two paths that cross. An outdated, aging magician, forced to wander from country to country, city to city and station to station in search of a stage to perform his act meets a young girl at the start of her life?s journey. Alice is a teenage girl with all her capacity for childish wond…er still intact. She plays at being a woman without realizing the day to stop pretending is fast approaching. She doesn?t know yet that she loves The Illusionist like she would a father; he already knows that he loves her as he would a daughter. Their destinies will collide, but nothing ‘“ not even magic or the power of illusion’“ can stop the voyage of discovery.

A script for THE ILLUSIONIST was originally written by French comedy genius and cinema legend Jacques Tati as a love letter from a father to his daughter, but never produced. Sylvain Chomet, the Oscar-nominated and critically acclaimed creator of The Triplets of Belleville, adapted the script and brought it to life in his distinctive hand-drawn animated style.

Sony Pictures Classics will be releasing the film in New York and Los Angeles on Christmas Day this year, and presumably in select cities after that. The film has been submitted for the best animated picture at the Academy Awards, but it seems likely that Toy Story 3 will win.

Hulu recently uploaded six clips from the film and I thought I’d share them with you all, to get an idea of what you’re in store for. I know these clips found their way online a few months back, but since we haven’t run them yet, I thought it’d be good to keep them fresh in your mind.

What do you think about these clips? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.