oken Reviews

L'enfant de la haute mer (1985)

Dreamlike adaptation of Jules Supervielle's short story

[27 July 2003]

Child of the high seas is the graduation work of 4 students from France and definitely has one of the most interesting CGI graphics attached to a haunting story of a girl trapped in a time-space between two worlds. The animation is 7 minutes long and mainly the adaptation of Jules Supervielle's short story of the same name which is plotted on a dreamspace created within the mind of Charles Steenvorde who has lost his only child to sea in a terrible storm so delusions & unreality jumps out of the water like the flying fishes every moment. The animation just takes a piece of the real story to use its dreamlike atmosphere backed up with water color textured CGI graphics (!) and leaves the haunting part to watcher's further interest. The original story is a must read which also reminded me some aspects of "Tenshi no Tamago". This piece was shown within "Unfamiliar Worlds" part of France Animated Short Films festival and in my opinion was "creme de la creme" of the show. Unfortunately it isn't available in any format other than VHS tapes possibly stocked somewhere in French Culture Associations.