Louise and hiver (2016)

Directed by: Jean-François Laguionie | 75 minutes | animation | Original voice cast: Diane Dassigny, Dominique Frot, Antony Hickling, Jean-François Laguionie

While in 2016 the art house audience could enjoy the beautiful fairy tale of drowning people ‘The Red Turtle’ (Michael Dudok de Wit), in 2017 it is the honor of the French animator Jean-François Laguionie who expressed his reflections on life and loneliness in a grandiose cartoon. cast entitled ‘Louise en hiver’ (Louise in winter). Where Dudok de Wit’s film progressed linearly, Laguionie plays with time by allowing his 75-year-old title character Louise (with the beautiful, lived-in voice of Dominique Frot) to go back to her youth in his mind. And that’s not the only time trick he pulls.

For years, Louise has been spending her summers alone in the (fictional) town of Biligen-sur-Mer. Under a large parasol she writes musings in a book and sees life lazily passing by. The people are a bit loud (“but slightly less noisy than the seagulls”) and she is starting to suffer from old people’s ailments such as presbyopia. But otherwise the beach of Biligen is a great place to stay. We don’t know what her life is like in the city. She does refer to children and grandchildren, but we do not actually find out how the contact with them is. Throughout the film we only follow Louise, who remains glued to the seaside resort.

Because of a broken clock in her holiday home, she misses the last train of the season back to the big city. Time has literally stood still (the clock is permanently stuck at a quarter past six) and Louise decides she can take care of herself, until someone from the city irrevocably starts missing her and starts a scavenger hunt. She first has to weather a heavy storm, but then summer returns in all its splendor and she leisurely builds a beach hut from some wreckage, from which she carries out her daily activities like a female Robinson Crusoe. Her only company after a while is a talking dog, which she calls Grandpa.

In the morning, Louise does the housework, then it’s time for a cold shower on the beach. Then she catches her food (she turns out to be more adept with fishing nets than she thought possible) and in the afternoon it’s time for her favorite part of the day: going on an adventure in the area. The days are stringing together in this way, while the sun continues to shine cheerfully. Once a helicopter flies over, but the old woman is not spotted. As the months go by in an endless summer, Louise (day) dreams about her childhood, at the end of the Second War, which she spent in the same place.

Louise’s surroundings are sketched in beautiful pastel tones, while the relief of the paper appears to remain visible. Laguionie has opted for a style in which the drawings he supplied are mixed with digital (3D) techniques. It is a joy to look at and the softness of the colors fits perfectly with the languor of the summer and with it the story. Supported by the gentle music of Pierre Kelner and Pascal Le Pennec, the film deals with joie de vivre, regret and above all the strange tricks of the memory.

As with ‘The Red Turtle’, it pays to turn off your own thoughts and just immerse yourself completely in the movie. With a duration in minutes that is equal to Louise’s age in years, the film is just the right length so as not to get boring. The magical-realistic character of the film gives Laguionie all the freedom to seamlessly merge Louise’s dreams and possible reality. As Louise says she discovers a new sky and a new beach every morning, this film will undoubtedly be completely different every time you watch it. And that is a wonderful prospect!