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There’s all the ingredients for something twee – a storybook aesthetic, a curmudgeon and an orphan bonding, and it’s based on a series of Belgian children’s books – yet Ernest & Celestine is a warm, lovely little piece of misfits bonding over their shared love of art. They operate outside of two oppressing societies, and the peaceful idle seems manufactured straight from Celestine’s own drawings and paintings. It’s a sneaky little knockout.
In this world brown bears populate the earth while their enemies, mice (just go with it), live underneath in the sewers. The anthropomorphic citizens of both worlds have a distrust of each other and demand that rigged order by enforced at all times. Why exactly? Who knows, but it’s not like the bears eat the mice, and the mice have a symbiotic relationship to the bears. Or, well, their teeth at any rate.
Yes, I said their teeth. Ernest & Celestine has some incredibly odd story beats and details. The quirk is really garnishing on the main course, the rich emotional vibrancy and artistic expressions we witness blossom when the two remove themselves from both societies and hide away from it all. The higher powers will demand a return to the established order, but Ernest & Celestine is a zippy, smart little movie that will not restore things to how they were but build something new, better, and more hopeful from its ashes.
Ernest & Celestine is a thorough delight, a whimsical, deeply felt animated movie that keeps the simplicity of its style and applies to its narrative structure. There’s more elliptical storytelling here than out-and-out narrative push, thank god. It creates several open moments for comedic gold, quiet reflection, terror or suspense, or touching little interactions between characters.
We need more films like this.
