Franck Ekinci

(On TV, September 2021) There are plenty of things I like in animated family film Avril et le monde truqué… and plenty I don’t. On the good side, it’s an almost insanely ambitious steampunk story, quickly sketching an alternate reality where Napoleon III dies freakishly, scientists are kidnapped, petroleum is somehow never discovered as an energy source and we find ourselves in 1941 with wood-powered everything, near-complete environmental collapse, the French going against the British and plenty of other surprises when a mysterious force appears. With a visual look borrowing much from the ligne claire school of comic books, the film at least looks interesting, which is followed though by a few spectacular set-pieces. As far as steampunk movies are concerned, this is one that plays big — the possibilities of animation are unleashed and the result comes from a rich imagination. On the other hand, there are two constant irritants (possibly idiosyncratic) that kept me from having a good time. The most specific one is clearly influenced by having read a lot of written Science Fiction with an emphasis on plausibility: The world sketched by Avril et le monde truqué is a nonsensical mess, only believable by easily impressed kids and few others. The idea of holding back scientific progress by kidnapping scientists and hiding them is roughly as plausible as the world becoming a grey plant-less wasteland due to tree harvesting. Of course, this is a film that eventually reveals its evil puppeteers to be sentient Komodo dragons, so it’s not as if it’s going for plausibility in the first place. The other problem, perhaps more serious, is a mixture of a depressing opening and the meaningless of death. Thirty minutes in, our unappealing heroine is scrabbling together a miserable existence following the death of her parents and the prolonged agony of her talking cat, all set against a large-scale portrait of war and environmental collapse. Dispiriting stuff — but don’t worry, as death in this film is a mere suggestion after seeing the number of characters resurrected from the dead on a fairly regular basis. There’s a sloppiness to the script that matches that of the world-building, and it’s hard to remain invested in the story when I’m constantly groaning, “This is so stupid” under my breath. It does mark co-directors Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci’s Avril et le monde truqué as the product of a creative crew unsure of itself and all too willing to shove absurdities under the unacceptable excuse of “this is a kids’ film” — better filmmakers take care to craft something that can sustain adult scrutiny. I will champion the film as an unusual, even striking steampunk science fiction film but being distinctive is really not the same thing as being satisfying, and we here see the difference starkly.