Fracture (1977) is a short animated film from France by the Brizzi Brothers (Paul and Gaëtan), a duo better known for their work on feature-length animated films such as Asterix versus Caesar (1985), and a number of films for Disney. Fracture is their earliest work, and isn’t remotely Disney-like, delivering an SF/fantasy scenario of alien inexplicabilities that makes it an animated counterpart of the comic strips that were running in Métal Hurlant (and its US counterpart, Heavy Metal) in the late 1970s. (The Brizzi Brothers’ most recent works have been comic books so I’d be surprised if Fracture didn’t have comics influence.)
Comics and animation have a considerable advantage over film and TV in being able to avoid the commercial imperatives that explain away mysteries and make the alien too familiar. Animation doesn’t exploit this advantage as often as it might so examples such as Fracture are all the more rare and valuable. The Brizzi Brothers’ film may not be as thoroughly strange and inexplicable as Piotr Kamler’s masterpiece, Chronopolis (1983), but it has its moments. As a bonus, the soundtrack is lifted from albums by Tangerine Dream and Edgar Froese which have been monopolising my waking hours for the past two weeks.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Captive, a film by René Laloux
• Continu-discontinu 2010, a film by Piotr Kamler
• L’Araignéléphant
• Le labyrinthe and Coeur de secours
• Chronopolis by Piotr Kamler