Sleeping Betty
2007 · 9m · Canada
Directed by Claude Cloutier
Tones: absurdist, humorous, whimsical
Betty falls asleep and an absurd parade of historical figures is summoned to wake her with a kiss.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Cloutier's anachronistic fairy-tale parade with Henry VIII and an alien — Monty Python by way of Quebec, and the man behind Bad Seeds doesn't miss. Yes.
Cloutier's ink-drawn Sleeping Beauty pastiche summoning Henry VIII, Aunt Victoria, and an emotional alien as rescuers is the Monty Python-by-way-of-Quebec gesture done with NFB craft, and 3.5M views confirm its reach. A small joy.
Cloutier's NFB ink-drawn 9-minute fairy tale with anachronistic historical cameos — the medium (classical pen-and-ink) crossed with the modernist anachronism is exactly the kind of NFB-specific formal play. 3.5M views over 12 years.