Fear(s) of the Dark

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

Rich, inventive, black-and-white animation (of the sort that puts to shame the neither-fish-nor-fowl, million-dollar color stuff that makes Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf such a bore) gets a go-round in Fears[s] of the Dark (Peur(s) du noir). This most interesting compilation of stories - some are self-contained while others wrap around the movie in strange and witty ways - is artful, often gorgeous to look at, and clever in the manner in which it makes its points and ties things together.

What it is not is scary. At all. Which is fine by me. I'll take my scares in live-action movies, thank you. Perhaps I am no longer able to be frightened by animated films. I recall being so by Disney's Fantasia when I saw it as a very young boy, but the flat, two-dimensional artwork on view in this movie will appeal more to animation connoisseurs than to folks looking for a fright. Yet there is plenty to enjoy for ancillary reasons.

Fear of insects, transformation and the "other" highlight Charles Burns' contribution. Highly story-heavy, it tracks a quiet young man who one day discovers and captures an odd insect, continues his life, first at university, then in a relationship - via which he eventually learns that, regarding the insect, it was actually the other way around. The animation, hard-edged and comic book-like, is eerie indeed, as is the story - which is also lots of fun.

Marie Caillou and Romain Slocombe offer their take on needles, imprisonment and Japanese samurai, among other fears. The animation here is airier and more bizarre. Fears are tapped but more glancingly, I think, than in Mr Burns's installment.

In their rich and all-over-the-place contribution, Italian artist Lorenzo Mattotti and Jerry Kramsky (who works closely with Mattotti and lives in Italy) deal with fears of monsters, dreams, magic and... oneself. I must admit to drifting off somewhat during this installment, which had a kind of hypnotic effect on me. I'd like to see it again after downing a large cup of coffee.

The section that comes closest to the title moniker belongs to Richard McGuire and Michel Pirus. This duo track a poor fellow who wanders from a snowbound landscape into a dark house, occupied by a perhaps not so friendly female and from which there appears to be no escape. The use of black and white is in some ways the most stunning - witty, bizarre, clever and creepy - of all the segments.

The two other installments come and go throughout the movie, wrapping around it and offering, in the case of Blutch (a pseudonym for artist Christian Hincker), fear of canines - particularly those of the killer kind. You might call this section "gory," except, as animation, it comes off much less so than any number of "slasher" movies many of us have seen. The animation is quite interesting, however, with a nearly-complete gray-scale spectrum that only the Mattotti/Kramsky section approaches elsewhere in the film.

Wittiest of all are the wrap-around/on-and-off bits provided by Pierre di Sciullo, who mixes very funny text/narration (dealing with the everyday fears of our modern times: social, political, environmental) with equally witty black-and-white geometric visuals. One can, it seems, be just as afraid of what lies ahead in broad daylight, once we've gotten out of bed in the morning, as of those other, more obvious and clichéd fears.

One more artist is mentioned in the press book for the film: Etienne Robial as artistic director. I don't think Robial is responsible for any individual segment, but more likely, he helped bring the movie together. In any case, if you are an animation aficionado, I don't imagine you'll want to miss this black-and-white feast. Even if you're only so-so on the subject, there's enough in the 78-minute running time to warrant a visit.