I'm not usually an animation fan, being a grown-up (just teasing). But as a bit of a Luddite, I can respect someone sticking to unnecessarily time-consuming old-school practices for the sake of art. So here are my The Top 6 Sylvian Chomet Films.
Key:
Short
Longer
A five-minute segment of a larger Paris-themed anthology or something, this live-action tale of a mime being annoying around town doesn't even have animation going for it.
If The Office was about struggling actors, in French and 11 minutes long.
It's a shame this wasn't painstakingly animated over the best part of a decade, but it's still a characteristic work that has the same infatuations with traditional virtuosity and values silent reflection.
Chomet's malformed world is as idiosyncratic as they come. Sweet and ghoulish, warming yet unsettling and horrific, I'm not sure when you'd be in the right mood for this film, but it will inevitably be some fellow freaks' favourite thing in the world.
Scratchier, rawer and more grotesque than his more polished full-lengths, this curious tale of a hungry man with no scruples disguising himself as a pigeon to deceive a kindly old lady felt like a twisted Wallace & Gromit.
I heard about this when it came out as a nice showcase for Edinburgh. Finally getting around to it almost a decade on, and almost a decade after living there (WHAT?), it was a delight to see my favourite place in the world rendered in loving detail. The story itself was less notable than those evocative backgrounds and the animation, but it was still very nice, if depressing.
