Au Revoir Mon Monde

Sometimes – most often in the animated category – there’s a little film tucked in there among the rest of the year’s Oscar-qualifying shorts whose primary reason for getting noticed seems to be simply that it is deeply, deeply peculiar.

As its title might suggest, Au Revoir Mon Monde is about the end of the world, though at a push it might be interpreted as the end of one man’s world as he has heretofore known it. That man is Karim, resident of a fictionalised Toronto (locals will spot a few recognisable places), and manager of a sushi restaurant. He spends his days dressed in a giant blue fish costume. Any illusions about this are quickly dismissed as, when we meet him, he’s sitting on the back step taking a smoke break.

The fish suit is absurd and quite adorable. It limits his field of vision, allowing for all manner of entertaining scrapes – and it is also, as it turns out, great armour. This proves useful, when, all of a sudden, a meteorite falls from the sky, causing the restaurant to explode. it’s the first of many. With a huge, dark shape gradually appearing in the sky, and gravity itself starting to misbehave, it’s clear that something is very wrong, and that the world will not be able to come back from this. Still, he reacts as most of us probably would in that situation, and starts running.

This is a student film, but it’s incredibly polished, textured and lit to Hollywood studio standards. A first class score adds to it personality and energy. Its bright colours and quirky sense of humour ably counterpoint the terror inherent in the story. Even destruction on this scale can only be taken so seriously when our focus is on a fish pelting down the street on a tiny scooter. There’s lots of action, with our hero crashing through windows and sliding down tilted skyscrapers en route to an unexpected meeting which changes the tone of events just before the end.

Though it seems unlikely to take the top prize, this is a fantastic calling card which should go a long way towards launching the careers of directors Estelle Bonnardel, Quentin Devred, Baptiste Duchamps, Maxime Foltzer, Florian Maurice and Astrid Novais. For anyone working their way through the super serious heavy hitters of awards season, it’s a delightful bit of anarchic fun.