Kijé
2014 · 9m · Belgium
Directed by Joanna Lorho
Genres: animation, experimental, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A phantom figure wanders a deserted city at night, drifting from grey urban desolation into a magical natural world populated by enigmatic figures who vanish before dawn.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Kijé is too prettily melancholic, too comfortable in its own dreaminess—it knows exactly what it wants to be (a ghost story about longing) and executes it without breaking a sweat, which is precisely why it doesn't stick in my throat the way I need.
Lorho's command of the animation medium is exquisite; the transition from urban grey into a luminous natural realm reads as a formal argument about animation's capacity for tonal metamorphosis, and the vanishing figures before dawn anchor the piece in a lineage of Romantic longing—the craft is too aware of itself to ignore.
The decision to render the urban world in muted, angular geometry while the natural world blooms into soft, organic forms is the hinge the whole film turns on—that single visual choice does the emotional and thematic work so cleanly that it feels inevitable.
Reviews
Contrairement à son sujet, « Kijé » n'est pas un film fantôme, sa chair, son trait sont bien palpables. La force et la beauté du travail de fourmi de Joanna Lorho donnent à ce premier film l'allure d'un grand.