{"id":453,"date":"2008-10-03T10:28:33","date_gmt":"2008-10-03T09:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2008\/10\/03\/fears-0f-the-dark\/"},"modified":"2008-10-03T11:04:34","modified_gmt":"2008-10-03T10:04:34","slug":"fears-0f-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2008\/10\/03\/fears-0f-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"FEAR(S) 0F THE DARK"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"Fear(s)<\/a><\/p>\n

\nFormat:<\/B> Cinema

\nRelease date:<\/B> 3 October 2008

\nVenues:<\/B> Odeon Panton St, Ritzy (London) and selected key cities

\nDistributor:<\/B> Metrodome

\nDirectors:<\/B> Charles Burns, Blutch, Marie Caillou, Richard McGuire, Pierre di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattoti

\nWriters:<\/B> Charles Burns, Blutch, Pierre di Sciullo, Jerry kramski, Richard McGuire, Michel Pirus, Romain Slocombe<\/I>

\nOriginal title:<\/B> Peur(s) du noir<\/I>

\nFrance 2007

\n85 mins\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\nBlack and white seems to be the new colour when it comes to adult animated movies from France, especially those with a comics source or styling. Hot on the high heels of Marjane Satrapi, who co-directed Persepolis<\/I> from her autobiographical graphic novel, and Christian Volckman, who put his future thriller Renaissance<\/I> into motion-capture monochrome, comes Fear(s) of the Dark<\/I>. This ensemble piece dares to allow leading innovators in French and American comics to transpose their motionless, soundless storyworlds to the animation medium. <\/p>\n

\nThe strong opener, Charles Burns<\/A>, is the best known outside of France for his Black Hole<\/I> saga, in development as a live-action film. His obsessions with the creeping unease of adolescence and uncontrollable bodily mutation resurface in his flashback about a timid biology student whose sweet first girlfriend changes after an insect bite into a terrifying sadist, overturning their male and female roles. Despite occasional awkwardness to the movements, it’s truly unsettling to experience Burns’s inhumanly precise outlines and saw-toothed feathering in motion and sound on the big screen. The other American participant, Richard McGuire, closes the film with a display of his elegant minimalism, conveying a man stumbling around an isolated ‘old dark house’, his silhouette sliding between shadows, his candle picking out hidden secrets. <\/p>\n

\nInstead of these pure contrasts of chiaroscuro, three of the French-based teams opt for palettes of grey. Marie Caillou with writer Romain Slocombe take us into the disturbing memories of a bullied Japanese schoolgirl, driven by a samurai’s ghost to violence, the only flash of red in the film. Caillou’s greenish tones add a cold, clinical chill. Italian-born Lorenzo Mattotti and Jerry Kramski recall boyhood terrors about mysterious disappearances and an unseen monster. Mattotti’s evocative shading shimmers and shifts sublimely in this atmospheric, allusive folk tale, tinged in sepia. A fleshy pink infuses Blutch’s brushstrokes as a cruel squire unleashes his raging hounds, one by one, on the innocent, its closing twist something of a let-down. Least successful are the interludes by typographer-designer Pierre di Sciullo who abstracts a woman’s confessions of fears great and small into symbolic geometric patterns. Still, this is a haunting sextet of chillers, rich with such diverse, distinctive drawings emerging from that most fearful of dark places, the imagination. <\/p>\n

Paul Gravett <\/B><\/I><\/p>\n

Paul Gravett is the author of Graphic Novels: Stories to Change Your Life<\/I> and The Mindscape of Alan Moore<\/I>. To find out more about his work on comics, go to paulgravett.com<\/A>.<\/p>\n

Read this review and much more in our autumn print issue<\/A>. The theme is cruel games, from sadistic power play in Funny Games<\/I> to fascist games in German hit The Wave<\/I> and Stanley Kubrick’s career-long fascination with game-playing. Don’t miss our fantastic London Film Festival comic strip, which surely is worth the price of the issue alone! <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black and white seems to be the new colour when it comes to adult animated movies from France, especially those with a comics source or styling.
\nReview by Paul Gravett <\/B><\/I><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cinema-releases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/purUP-7j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":291,"url":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2008\/03\/01\/irma-vep\/","url_meta":{"origin":453,"position":0},"title":"IRMA VEP","author":"VirginieSelavy","date":"March 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The idea of remaking Louis Feuillade's legendary serial Les Vampires, with Hong Kong action star Maggie Cheung in the role of the catsuited thief Irma Vep, is brilliant. 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