The Day of the Crows

I've seen the movie today at a preview in Vire (France). The first thing I saw about it was a few sketches and paintings made by Serge Elissalde that reminded me of Grimm fairy tales and the old illustrations by Gustave Doré or Arthur Rackham. The forest depicted as a place where anything can happen. What happens here is the story of a little boy raised as an animal by his violent, ogre-like father in the deep forest and banned from going outside. But when he finally has to go pass these limits and reach the nearest city, he will discover there are other people like them and find out what "love" really means. The setting is really well made, beautifully painted with a lot details as in a movie from Ghibli. The main character looks like a hero from a shonen manga with all the silliest facial expressions. The voices from the French version are really good, Jean Reno for the father, Lorànt Deutsch for the boy, Isabelle Carré for the girl Manon, and Claude Chabrol for her father (the movie is in memory of the latter, who died shortly after and did not see the movie finished). I couldn't help thinking of the movies by Hayao Miyazaki, not only because of Jean Reno (voice of Porco Rosso) but also because the silent spirits of the forest who are depicted as animal-headed humans : dears, frogs, pigs, who immediately conjured up images of Mononoke or Spirited Away. The music is also very present and add to the dream-like feeling of some of the scenes. Finally, the themes are richer than you can think and not a lot of animation movies dealt with father-son relationship with so much violence and depth, the movie is NOT a movie for young kids but older kids and adults will like it.