Reviewed by Tim Wong

A FRENCH-animation sensation touted as the must-have accessory to A Scanner Darkly’s colouring book malaise, Renaissance is, rather deflatingly, a die cut of razor-edged silhouettes inked by a Frank Miller wannabe: the contrast’s blown out, the mid-tones erased, while any trace of CMYK has virtually been obliterated from its bromide sci-fi fantasy. Literally rendered in black and white, it’s a Photoshop bender of warped image levels and stencilled-in vectors with no grey area in between. Technical marvel aside (its animators employ motion capture and a great eye for urban modernist sprawl), this is a film that wields its visual metaphor for dystopia a little too eagerly: stripped of colour, it’s also diluted of any real soul, where detail is lost in its opaque recesses, spectrum is nonexistent, and dimension is veiled behind curtains of stark white.

Besides the animation, it’s bleak: Paris, 2054, a technocracy seduced by the pursuit of everlasting beauty, a carrot of immortality dangled by a pervading multi-national spectre. High-level conspiracy ensues as a detective (voiced by Daniel Craig) becomes embroiled in machinations concealing the elixir of youth while hunting for a kidnapping victim somehow linked to it all. Not only is it convoluted, but evidence of one too many stabs at the genre’s cautionary tale of little men fighting the oppressive powers that be. Considerably more aware, Richard Linklater’s Philip K. Dick adaptation makes for alarming viewing by comparison, given its paranoia for invasive surveillance and corporate-sponsored drug addiction isn’t as far down the timeline as we’d like to think. It’s in fact on the precipice of the here and now; its woozy but tactile rotoscope imagery grounding it in a semblance of present reality. In Renaissance, distinguishing characters from the murk of shadows is a struggle at times, while the novelty of monochrome soon wears off, proving that the sombre of black and white should be reserved strictly for funerals, the Amish, and nuns. Christian Volckman, the nuts behind it all, clearly has a fetish for noir, and unfortunately too, a comic book hang up. This is not a crisp looking film, just a flat one, better suited to paper than film. You can thank him for taking the imagination out of animation.

» Christian Volckman | France/UK | 2006 | In Theatres October 19