Video review: "Ernest & Celestine"

Given the choice, I prefer to watch a foreign film in its native tongue rather than a version dubbed in English. Others disagree, and they may have a point in the case of “Ernest & Celestine,” an Oscar-nominated animated film about a bear and a mouse who become best pals. Small children who do not yet read, or read slowly, might have a hard time keeping up.

Luckily, the video version of “Ernest & Celestine” includes both the original French voices as well as some Americanized ones. So you can choose to hear Lambert Wilson and Pauline Brunner, respectively, as the voices of Ernest the bear and Celestine the mouse in French, or opt for Forest Whitaker and Mackenzie Foy in English.

The American soundtrack also features the voices of Lauren Bacall, Paul Giamatti, William H. Macy, Nick Offerman, Jeffrey Wright and Megan Mullally.

The film takes place in parallel worlds: above street level, bears drive cars, shop at stores, go to school, and so on. Down in the sewers, the lives of the mice proceed much the same. The two groups fear and despise each other.

Their only real source of interaction is in the market for bear teeth: the bears buy new teeth to replace their rotted ones (the bears in this world love candy), and the mice file down the baby teeth of bears to substitute for their sharp incisors.

But a chance encounter throws Ernest and Celestine into a pot of trouble, and on the run from the police in both their communities. While hiding out at Ernest’s bucolic cottage on the edge of town, they find themselves becoming fast friends.

There’s an inclusive, gentle message here about showing tolerance to those who are different from us. It may go over the heads of wee ones, but this is the rare animated film adults while enjoy as much as their kids.

“Ernest & Celestine” is sweet, lyrical and lovely – in French or English.

Bonus features are the same for DVD and Blu-ray editions of the film. In addition to the dual language tracks, there is also a making-of featurettes, a feature-length animatic detailing the animation process, plus an interview with co-director Benjamin Renner.

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Review: "Ernest & Celestine"

One of the untrammeled joys of springtime is the arrival of Oscar-nominated foreign films that are just now making their way to U.S. theaters outside of New York and L.A. It seems a little crazy that “Ernest & Celestine” was shown at the Toronto Film Festival in late summer of 2012, but is just now arriving in the heartland, despite picking up an Academy Award nod for best animated feature last year.

It’s well worth the wait. This hand-drawn French-Belgian production is a sheer delight, a mix of whimsy and somber subtext that should please both children and adults mightily. My 3-year-old watched it rapturously, and then asked to see it again – despite not being able to read the English subtitles.

(There is also an English-dubbed version making the rounds that includes the voices of Forest Whitaker, Mackenzie Foy, Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally. Personally, I always prefer to watch a film in its native language, but I can see where kids not yet able to read quickly might find the subtitle experience frustrating.)

Based on a series of children’s books by Gabrielle Vincent, “Ernest & Celestine” takes us into a split world of bears and mice. Above ground, the bears go about their daily business in a Paris-like setting, complete with shops, cars and police. The parallel mouse land underneath them is much the same in a miniaturized version.

Each group fears and hates the other. The bears regard mice as vile vermin, while mice view bears as predators who eat their kind. Celestine (voice of Pauline Brunner) is a kind-hearted mouse who grew up in an orphanage, where the tyrannical old caretaker with the perfect name of La Grise (Anne-Marie Loop) weaves vivid tales of mouse tots being devoured by the Big Bad Bear. Despite this, Celestine is not afraid of bears and draws portraits of herself befriending a bear.

Meanwhile, Ernest (Lambert Wilson) lives in a dilapidated cottage in the countryside, coming to town to make some money as an itinerant street musician and feed his growling hunger. Ernest and Celestine run into each other, get into some scrapes with the law, and become fugitives while growing closer.

I loved that the primary type of commerce happening in both the bear and mouse worlds involves teeth. The mice steal baby bear teeth, which they file down to replace their own sharp incisors, so they can chew through virtually anything.

The bears have their own stores where they can pick out new teeth for themselves. One enterprising married couple runs a candy shop on one side of the street and a tooth outlet in the other, so the latter can service the bears who have rotted their teeth away at the former.

I adored the spare, expressive animation style of the film, which approximates the illustrations of a children’s book. Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar and Benjamin Renner serve as a trio of co-directors, with Daniel Pennac supplying the screenplay adaptation.

The movie’s tone is sweet and simple, but there are seismic tremors of deeper portents, if one cares to listen. This is best captured in a pair of simultaneous court hearings, in which Celestine and Ernest each have to justify their affection for one another before a jury of their opposite kind. It’s a subtle comment on society being intolerant of those on their margins.

This stuff will surely go over the head of wee ones, as it’s supposed to. They’ll just have to settle for a magical little tale about a pair of unlikely furry friends.