Sylvain Chomet
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The feeling he evokes in the small, cramped pub is like something out of "I Know Where I'm Going" or "Local Hero," a sense of warmth among locals with quirky habits (a bald light bulb is treated like a grand theatrical accoutrement).
The odd duo travel from the edge of the sea (the little village looks like the place Burt Lancaster finds himself in Local Hero) to Edinburgh, and share a hotel room (innocently - he sleeps on the couch).
The newbie director's aesthetic influences are top of the line: The Quay brothers' nightmarish visions of distressed puppets adrift in decayed landscapes; Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein's Oscar-winning 1989 short Balance; Sylvain Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville; Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children; Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer's psychologically perverse fairy tales -- we're talking the greatest hits of gloomy, doomy European animation and hyper-stylized live action.
As studios close their traditional hand-drawn animation departments, we'll need more movies like this, like Sylvain Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville, like the Nick Park films Chicken Run and the upcoming Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Song of the Sea (2014)
Directed by Tomm Moore
influenced by The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
Visuals
I was reminded, at times, of the painstakingly detailed beauty of “The Triplets of Belleville,” but Moore has a more ethereal, rounded aesthetic all his own.
The best thing the film has in its corner are a few of the actors, particularly Martindale (an instantly-recognisable and quite good character actress, whose most prominent role is probably in the final, greatest segment of Paris, je t'aime ; one hopes that her presence in a blockbuster will at least give her a higher profile with casting directors), and Miley Cyrus herself, who proves to be gifted with uncommon comedic timing, and a refreshingly non-fussed-over earthliness to her bearing and appearance (doubtlessly, this is a persona carefully fussed-over by dozens of executives and designers, but hell, if it works, it works).