the bear and the mouse parachuted into dictatorship

THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE

A cloud of sweetness and poetry arises this week in cinemas. His name is Ernest and Celestine: the trip to Charabiea film imagined from the series of children’s books by Gabrielle Vincent (The Adventures of Ernest and Celestine, published in the 1980s by Casterman) whose delicate spirit and line he retains. We find the two heroes – who have become classics of children’s literature – the bear and the mouse, inseparable friends with opposite temperaments and sizes. The first homebody and grumpy, the second intrepid and outspoken. The big and the small: the formula has, for a long time and many times, proven itself in the field of comedy. Conducted here with great tenderness, it helps to transmit certain values. First and foremost: tolerance.

At the beginning of the film, a disaster occurs which will put Ernest in a bad mood. When he has just come out of his hibernation, and is dying of hunger, here is indeed that Célestine, carried by the enthusiasm of the reunion, is agitated in all directions and overturns the “stradivarours” of his musician friend. Deeply sorry, the little mouse stubbornly wants to go in search of the only luthier capable of repairing the instrument.

Dictatorship

However, the latter lives in Charabie, a distant country where the bear refuses to go. Célestine leaves, soon joined by her boyfriend who cannot leave her alone to face the enemy. Because Charabie, he knows. He lived there with his family and fled it. There are several reasons for this: the dictatorial regime that reigns in this region (where music is totally forbidden, even birds are chased away), but also his father, an authoritarian judge who wanted to see his son exercise the same profession as him.

This return to basics, one suspects, will not be easy. It will lead our two heroes on a number of perilous adventures and will allow us to discover the bear’s childhood. The intimate story slips through the interstices of a rather crazy race that never yields to the ease of pure action. On the contrary, each moment brings its little note, changes tempo and tonality. Holding in passing its little lesson of freedom and fraternity, the film thus builds a score full of grace to which agrees an aesthetic of watercolor which softens the world.