Iron Boy director Louis Clichy is delighted to be bringing his latest animation to Cannes, even though the world’s biggest film festival is a completely different world.
“I’m glad it didn’t fall into the ‘special category,'” he told Variety. “Iron Boy,” sold by Playtime, first premiered in Un Certain Regard and wowed critics, with Variety hailing it as “a visually dazzling and intensely personal work.”
“For us animators, Cannes is a different world. There are a lot more egos, and there are still stereotypes about what animation is: that it’s ‘too much’ or that it’s just for kids. But animators are really good actors, and we can make subtle work too.”
“Animation is expensive, so many people don’t want to take the risk. But it’s our responsibility!” he added.
In his film, young Kristoff grows up on a farm. Life there is tough and requires a strong backbone, which is exactly what Kristoff seems to lack. He keeps falling down and causing small disasters in the house and school. The solution is simple. Must wear an iron corset. anytime.
“Corsets are a metaphor for adolescence,” Chrissie admits.
“At that age, you don’t feel comfortable and you want to hide your body. It exaggerates the whole idea of not being satisfied with the status quo. You also have to be very ‘straight’ in a way to survive on the farm. And he’s different. ”
Chrissy also grew up in the countryside.
“I come from a farming background, but I moved to the city when I was 11 and my parents divorced. Now I had to go back. I didn’t want to tell my own story. I just borrowed what was important to me.[Screenwriter]Frank Salome helped me a lot in that respect.”
“We didn’t want anyone here to feel like a stereotype. Kristoff’s father doesn’t like to express his emotions – he’s a man of his generation – but he loves sentimental pop songs, and that already says a lot.”
Kristoff always feels like he is letting his father down. He also becomes increasingly aware that things are not going well on the farm. He must escape, and art offers him a way out. Like Chrissy herself?
“I think that’s obvious,” he laughed.
“I would also like to say that he doesn’t just find an escape in art. He finds in the church organist (who teaches him how to play) a second father figure. Christophe needs someone to take care of him. I don’t know if he’s a musician or not. I didn’t want him to play in big concerts or win competitions like Billy Elliot. He’s not Mozart, you know. He just loves this teacher and cherishes the time they spent together.
Chrissie wanted to keep things realistic in “Iron Boy.”
“That was the balance I really wanted. There’s some very real things in there, but there’s also all the magic. When they scream, and when they laugh, we’re overjoyed,” he explains.
“I didn’t know anything about organs until I saw this movie, so I really had to educate myself. I think it’s important to make sure you know what you’re talking about. The audience might not know if they’re cheating or not, but I wanted this story to have a solid foundation. Only then could I be sure that realism and fantasy would go together.”
Clichy is the director behind Asterix: House of the Gods and Asterix: The Secret of the Potion, but Iron Boy, produced by Eddie Cinema with Beside Productions and Regular Productions, is a completely different ballgame. He calls it “traditional animation.”
“I mean, it was developed frame by frame. That’s why I love animation. CGI and 3D are so trendy, but after ‘Asterix,’ I wanted to go back to something simpler, and that’s exactly what I did.”
The method he chose allowed him to express the characters’ facial expressions with great detail.
“I liked the fact that everything was a little… rough. It allowed me to be spontaneous and intense and intense,” he jokes.
“It can be difficult when you still want to convey so much and only have one line. So I had to be precise. You can’t hide behind hair or beautiful clothes, so I had to make sure we were always on the same path.”
The reduced budget ultimately freed him up and allowed him to go beyond his normal limits, being “unrestricted.”
“With animation, people can be very commercial or very artistic, and a lot of viewers think, ‘This isn’t for me.’ I wanted to incorporate a little bit of everything. There are animated films like that. You just have to look at director Miyazaki, who often depicts world situations in a realistic way. I was really inspired by that.”
