Written and directed by Michel Ocelot Classification: F Rating: ***½
At the beginning of Kirikou and the Sorceress, an animated fable from France's Michel Ocelot, a pregnant African woman is resting in the noon day sun, when her baby speaks from inside the womb: "Mother, bring me into the world."
"If you are old enough to speak, you are old enough to come into the world by yourself," says the mother.
The baby crawls out, snips off his own umbilical cord and asks his mother to wash him.
In rapid order, the baby is interrogating his mother about his relatives and his village. When he learns that his uncle is on his way to fight a sorceress named Karaba, who has apparently killed and eaten every other young man in the village, the baby decides to race after the young warrior and help him. Safe in his perch under his uncle's hat, he manages to thwart Karaba, and begin an epic battle for the survival of his village.
The baby's name is Kirikou, and he remains naked, save for the little fringe of hair on top of his head, throughout the story. He's an unusual superhero and Kirikou the movie is a rarity as well. Ingenious, comical and beautifully original, this first feature film by Ocelot was inspired by an African folk tale (the director was raised in the West African country of Guinea). For children, the tale of a baby who consistently outwits adults should prove hugely entertaining; they can laugh at Kirikou's cleverness in outwitting the sorceress's attempts to steal the village's children, thrill to his dangerous voyage under the mountain and applaud his final triumph.
Adults will recognize the classic myth of the journeying hero, an Odysseus the size of a yam, who travels far to bring his community back to life, and arrives home in a most surprising disguise. Along the way, there are numerous pleasures in the details.
The music, for example, is by West African musician Youssou N'Dour, who uses traditional instruments only. The music rises out of the story organically; when the village children improvise a song in praise of Kirikou ("Kirikou is small in size. But Kirikou is very wise"), it sounds like something children might invent. African actors (though not always West African) voice the characters, both in the original French and in the dubbed English.
On the visual side, Ocelot has been limited in his quest for authenticity by the dearth of an African painterly tradition. For his pulsingly bright visual palette, Ocelot has relied on the style of Henri Rousseau. The figures are drawn in a somewhat rigid sculptural style, deliberately suggestive of Egyptian art, though their movement is graceful. The women are of all shapes and ages and are bare-breasted throughout. The sorceress, regal and forbidding, is particularly impressive, a kind of living Egyptian mummy, adorned in gold amulets and necklaces, with her hair sprouting out like Medusa's snaky head.
The animals, some of which Kirikou encounters in an underground burrow, dash and dart like wild creatures, though the burrowing squirrels do verge on Bambi-like cuteness. The sorceress, in order to carry out her evil deeds, uses an army of fetishes -- bird and animal figures inspired by West African folk art and made out of painted wood and bone. Finally, Kirikou's entrance to the mountain domain of his wise grandfather pays homage to Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, though child viewers are more likely to associate the image with the Disney adaptation of the story.
There is one important area where Kirikou diverges from Disney: From the start, Kirikou is determined not only to save his village, but to understand the reason for the sorceress's evil ways. Though adult after adult assures him that her evil is just the way of the world, Kirikou persists in looking more deeply. The villains of the Disney features -- Ursula in The Little Mermaid, Gaston in Beauty and The Beast and Scar in The Lion King -- are violently and terminally dispatched. Kirikou is more interested in understanding and reforming the sorceress, and this is a better movie for it. Smashing evil is all very well; outwitting it, and healing it, represents a whole different level of ethical sophistication. Kirikou is, indeed, very wise. Kirikou and The Sorceress opens in Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton today, in Vancouver on March 17 and Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton on March 24.
Liam Lacey