THE STORY – The Sauvage family just wants to be loved. Carole is trying to improve her poor reputation among her employees, while Jacques is trying to do the same with his friends. As for their son Blaise, politely, he’s about to embark on a revolutionary, violent and completely impromptu crusade for a girl.
THE CAST – Léa Drucker, Jacques Gamblin, Timéo & Nina Blanc-Francard
THE TEAM – Dimitri Planchon (Director/Writer) & Jean-Paul Guigue (Director)
THE RUNNING TIME – 82 Minutes
You know that moment when you ask someone to repeat something, and you still don’t catch it, but you just nod affirmatively rather than asking them for a third repetition? Or when you’ve forgotten someone’s name, so you just refer to them with pronouns? How about waving at someone you think you recognize, only for it not to be them, and somehow the best solution is just to keep waving and pretend that you’re greeting someone further away? If just thinking about awkward social interactions like these gives you a visceral reaction, then “Blaise” is the movie for you. Adapted from Dimitri Planchon’s comic book, which was previously turned into an animated series in 2016, this feature-length animated film is a perfectly calibrated machine of cringe, made in a uniquely French factory. With appropriately uncanny animation, it’s a hilarious, wince-inducing comedy that explores the ridiculous concessions we make to avoid awkward social interactions. But of course, these avoidance methods only make things worse in the long run, as co-directors Planchon and Jean-Paul Guigue painfully demonstrate in their over-the-top, exaggerated version of the world.
Blaise is a 16-year-old who, like every non-psychopathic 16-year-old in history, feels unsure of how to navigate the world as his adulthood rapidly approaches. His parents, Carole and Jacques, certainly aren’t helping in this regard, as they’re a tangle of idiosyncrasies and anxieties themselves. To start, Jacques has a debilitating allergy to detergents (but only apple-scented ones) that flares up at inopportune times, and Carole is struggling to adjust to being the newly appointed head of a department full of nervous employees. At a party, Blaise meets Josephine, who’s also on the brink of adulthood and plays-acts as someone who has their life figured out, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
Carole’s interactions with her new work compatriots are particularly hilarious. As a character, her individualized voice is so strong; it’s obvious what she means to say, but she just has a habit of expressing herself in a way that leads to constant misinterpretations. This curse of a communication style isn’t helped by the fact that, as a manager, she has power over nearly everyone she interacts with, and her nervous employees are already constantly on edge. Blaise and Josephine make for the kind of comedic pairing that must be watched through fingers, even if it’s hard not to root for them as a couple. After all, their quirks and habits are incredibly similar, and they both have a tendency to go to extreme ends to keep up appearances, propped up by mistruths.
In fact, every single character in “Blaise,” no matter how much screentime they have, is a total mess. But not in an outward-facing, “stay away from them” kind of way. Like so many of us, the characters work hard to maintain the illusion of competence and cool-headedness, even as the contrast between what we know their intentions to be and their actual actions tells a different story. But there’s a good reason for the characters’ anxieties, as the film constructs a world where every interaction has the potential for grave misunderstanding. “Blaise” is essentially Murphy’s Law in cinematic form: anytime that a character’s actions or words can be misinterpreted in the worst possible way or the most undesirable outcome for an individual character can occur, that’s sure to be exactly what happens. It doesn’t necessarily make for the easiest watch at times, and anyone with an aversion to discomfort in their art should stay far away. But the mix-ups and predicaments that the characters experience with a frequency approaching Greek tragedy are an unending source of super-effective (and at times squeamishly relatable) comedy.
“Blaise” looks totally unlike any other contemporary animated film. Its characters are brought to life in a style that’s difficult to describe but absolutely compelling. Although at times it veers uncomfortably close to something resembling realism, there’s always something cartoonish about the look of the film. The unease the movie evokes, even if one were to watch it on mute, is the perfect visual choice for such a twisted comedy of manners. The characters can’t help but repeatedly make errors in judgment and commit social faux pas, and the borderline-eerie animated designs heighten the disconcerting feelings the film hopes to evoke in its viewers.
After one particularly disastrous moment, one character remarks, “I think there’s an awful misunderstanding.” Nearly every scene in “Blaise” could end with such a summation. It tells the tale of characters who act out of fear of appearing bad rather than with logic, and, in doing so, it offers a caricature of the real world. You might say it’s a cartoonish version of what many of us experience every day, both to and from ourselves: an abundance of casual lies in order to rush past less convenient truths, dispensed with an informality that, more often than not, comes back to hurt us. It even eventually gets a bit dark, as if the dishonesty of the characters has continuously accumulated until it’s past the point of sensible containment. “Blaise” is both entertaining and damning, showing what happens when feelings and comfort are valued over the truth.
