Film captures the simple charm of an emotional story

Between 1956 and 1959, French film legend and comic genius Jacques Tati wrote an original script about a magician and a young girl. Meant as a love letter from father to daughter, the story was too serious and too personal for Tati himself to produce.

It remained untouched for 50 years in the possession of Tati’s daughter until it found its way to Sylvain Chomet, director of the Oscar-nominated animated film, The Triplets of Belleville.

In The Illusionist, Chomet has lovingly adapted Tati’s poignant script, using his characteristic hand-drawn style of animation to quietly capture the innocence of a bygone era.

The Illusionist is a mostly silent film about a stone-faced, old-fashioned magician named Tatischeff, an animated version of Tati himself. Specializing in pulling a rabbit out of a hat or turning a deck of cards into a bouquet of flowers, Tatischeff represents a brand of stage entertainment that no longer seems relevant with the coming of rock ‘n’ roll in the late ’50s.

After playing to empty houses and distracted crowds in Paris and London, Tatischeff takes a job performing at a pub on a behind-the-times island off the west coast of Scotland where the people are celebrating the arrival of electricity.

Here he meets Alice, a young girl awestruck by the illusionist’s tricks, which she believes are real magic. Seeing her tattered clothes, Tatischeff “conjures” a pair of new shoes for the girl, who is so enchanted she follows him to Edinburgh, Scotland.

They seem to instantly take up the roles of father and daughter, staying together in a boarding house populated with other struggling vaudeville performers (in the innocent world of the film, there is never a question of the girl’s parents or Tatischeff’s intentions).

Tatischeff hides his financial difficulties from Alice in an effort to keep up the illusion of magic as he continues to provide pieces of the sophisticated, grown-up wardrobe she dreams of having. But as times change and Alice matures, the illusionist becomes disillusioned with his own tricks.

With only snippets of mumbled dialogue, The Illusionist is a triumph of visual storytelling. In the vein of an old Chaplin or Keaton film, Chomet finds universal humor and pathos in very specific moments.

When Alice walks in her first pair of high heels, the same pair she had been looking at through a store window, she awkwardly tries to look as sophisticated as possible, knees wobbling like a baby deer trying its fragile legs for the first time.

It is a moment viewers recognize with affection, as a girl on the verge of adulthood naively imitates the women she hopes to become.

The small, incredibly human moments such as this one provide the quiet energy of the film.

The world Chomet creates for Tatischeff — and there is a strong sense of Chomet’s devotion to the illusionist — is filled with a wonderfully quirky cast of characters. Tatischeff’s grumpy, red-eyed rabbit fruitlessly struggles every time he is put in a hat, but it is obvious that there is a level of mutual affection between man and rabbit, no matter how deeply buried.

Among the vaudevillians at the boarding house is a drunk, emaciated clown who, at one point, is on the verge of committing suicide when Alice knocks on the door to bring him some dinner, restoring his faith.

Even though none of the characters join in conversation on screen, there is a permeating sense of camaraderie between them, a sense in which the audience can partake as well.

It is to the credit of Chomet’s beautifully old-fashioned animation that the director is able to visually convey so much. The lovely imperfections of the 2-D, hand-drawn style are able to capture a sadness and an intense nostalgia that the crisp, plastic images of today’s Disney (even in its recent return to “traditional” animation in The Princess and the Frog or this month’s Tangled) never could.

Although characters might have stylistically exaggerated features, the audience can still feel as if it is watching something real. Chomet tends to avoid close-ups and the typical shot-reverse-shot pattern in favor of deep focus long takes, as if the “camera” is simply observing.

In the most visually stunning shot of the film, that “camera” takes off from atop a mountain, providing a breathtaking panorama of Edinburgh that is as true to the spirit of the city as any photographic image could be.

The Illusionist is a slow-moving film, meandering along from scene to scene with no obvious thrust. But if one is able to adjust to the pace and simply inhabit Tatischeff’s changing world, there are endlessly perfect little moments of slapstick humor, true human connection or deeply felt nostalgia.

The innocence and simplicity of the storytelling convey a lamentation of the passage of time, of growing up and losing magic. Chomet directs the film with a magic of his own, as well as a deep affection and respect for Tati that allows him to capture the depth of emotion packed into this subtle tale.

The Illusionist might be Tati’s story, but it could not have found its way into better hands.