- "En avant" evokes the reports of two brothers who are trying to bring their deceased father back.
- This beautiful story plays with the codes of heroic fantasy.
- The director of “Monsters University” confirms his talent for juggling emotions.
Why does En avant de Dan Scanlon bring tears to our eyes, not from sorrow, but from shared emotion? Perhaps quite simply because the director of Monsters University tells his own story here. And we fall for its clumsy magical heroes.
"We lost our father very early," says the filmmaker at 20 Minutes . Forward is my way of paying homage to my big brother who has always supported me. »Pixar-style magic obliges, their adventures knew serious arrangements with reality before becoming an animated film rich in adventures. "Playing with the codes of heroic fantasy seemed to me ideal for telling our fraternal relationships," says Dan Scanlon. Ian and Barley, the brothers in the film, are a delicious composite of him and his elder, both close and distant from reality.
Half of his dad
"I just wondered what I would say to my father if I could see him again for a day," says Dan Scanlon. It was then that the incantation came to him which allows Ian and Barley to bring their daddy back. The problem is that they miss their fate and they end up with a half-dad, a pair of legs in purple socks topped with a beautiful blue light. "We had to fight to get this idea accepted because many people feared that young audiences would be traumatized," recalls the filmmaker. This half-dad reserves twists of gags when it enters the decoration and melts of tenderness when it tries to communicate with its fistons by trampling and interposed dances.
Magic or technology
Ian the shy one and Barley enters it immediately touched by their complementarity. One knew their father a little while the other was born after the latter's death. “Both suffer from the same lack, one solves it by technology by being a geek, the other by the dreams of magic in which he takes refuge. I believe that wisdom lies between their two positions, “says Dan Scanlon. He denies that he wanted to make an anti-technology film. "It would be surprising when I work at Pixar where we work a lot with IT," he laughs. I don't think there is anything incompatible with loving computers and magic. What his film demonstrates with great inventiveness.
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[Movie: #enavant] It's as much the idea of a first odyssey for its heroes as the promise of a new page for #Pixar. It is widely held, the studio with a loupiotte brilliantly mixing adventures, emotions and unusual. Towards magic and beyond! 😉 Full review: https://www.senscritique.com/film/En_avant/critique/214101827
A post shared by Jean Aribaud (@jeanaribaud) on Mar 1, 2020 at 12:30 pm PST
Mother but not only
If In front is centered on two teenagers, the female characters also carve out a lion's share (or lioness with a scorpion's tail)! "It seemed important to me to pay tribute to those who fight alone with courage as was the case for our mother," says Dan Scanlon. Not only is the mother of heroes a damn good combative and affectionate woman, but she has also rebuilt her life in a fulfilling way. "I wanted to show that a mother does not necessarily have to center her life on her only children," insists the director. We still wonder what his father-in-law thought of his alter ego of the film: a generous and somewhat obtuse centaur who takes on the furniture with great assholes.
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