A Monkey's Tale
France/UK/Germany 1999
Reviewed by Amanda Lipman
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
In the wake of a great forest flood, a monkey community is divided between the Woonkos, who live a carefree life in the treetops, and the Laankos, who build a 'civilisation' in the roots of the trees. Kom, a young Wonkoo monkey, falls down a ravine.
Injured, he is found by the Laanko king who decides to bring him back to his castle. There, he soon becomes a favourite of the king and falls in love with a servant girl, Gina, whose mistress, Princess Ida, is being slowly poisoned by the power-hungry grand chancellor Sebastian and his sidekick Gerard.
Kom tries to help the king achieve his dream of finding his people a new home on an apparently unreachable island across the lake. The lake freezes and they set out to cross it on foot. The king is drowned and Kom returns to discover Sebastian's plot to seize the throne. Together with Gina, he foils Sebastian and Gerard and ensures that a newly cured Princess Ida becomes queen, before returning with Gina to his treetop home.
Review
From the world of anthropomorphic animation comes a new tale of trouble and strife. The two monkey tribes depicted here are divided by fear and contempt: the tree-dwelling Woonkos' fear of the unknown demons lurking below, and the ground-level Laankos' contempt (masking fear, perhaps) of the uncivilised, ear-showing, unclothed savages above (although the Woonkos are demure enough to sport loincloths). As it turns out, the two tribes speak the same language and the teenage Woonko, Kom, is able to show the uptight Laankos a thing or two about the direct approach to life that his tribe take. In doing so, he punctures some of the Laankos' pretensions, laying bare their superstitions.
They may be able to make mechanical machines, read libraries full of books and entertain their (non-tree-climbing) children in playgrounds, but they still believe that the water that surrounds them is inhabited by an evil monster, which stops them from going anywhere. Through Kom, the film lays gently into some of the stranger aspects of civilisation. Having learned the game of finding his way through a maze, Kom retorts ironically: "I'm becoming civilised - I've done something useless!"
It's probably no coincidence that in accent and behaviour the freewheeling, flat-topped Woonkos have more than a tinge of American to them, while the suspicious Laankos come across as distinctly British - Michael York voices the wearily regal king; John Hurt's Sebastian is a haughty parody of hand-rubbing wickedness; and Rik Mayall's Gerard is his ridiculously enthusiastic evil sidekick. But this European co-production (directed by French animator Jean-François Laguionie) is no paean to the star-spangled banner: the Woonko elder Korkonak, for instance, is as full of prejudice and bombast as some of the Laankos. Instead, it is an enjoyable, if predictable, conflation of two hugely popular movie genres: the effervescent American teen pic and the doughty British costume drama, complete with a mishmash of wimples and bodices and skull caps.
As a jovial plea for tolerance, A Monkey's Tale's celebration of the potential of free-spirited young folk to build bridges should please the film's youthful audience, to say nothing of their parents. And the polarities of love and loathing dealt with by the film find an echo in the artwork. In front of the translucent washes of colour that make up the jungle scenery, the animals seem to pass at first through loops of light and shade, their features sharp and clear one moment and then cast into darkness the next. By the end, the shade has gone, along with the prejudices. Bathed in the warm glow of mutual understanding, all is bright again - even the tiger prowling in the jungle, a real cause of fear, has disappeared.
Credits
- Director
- Jean-François Laguionie
- Producers
- Steve Walsh
- Patrick Moine
- Gerd Hecker
- Screenplay
- Norman Hudis
- Jean-François Laguionie
- Camera
- Jean-Paul Rossard
- Editors
- Soizic Veillon
- Ludovic Cassou
- Yves Françon
- Anke Schmidt
- Music
- Alexandre Desplat
- ©English version
- 1999. Steve Walsh Productions/Les Films du Triangle/Cologne Cartoon/Entertainment Rights plc/France 3 Cinéma
- Production Companies
- Miracle Communications and Steve Walsh Productions present a Steve Walsh Productions/Les Films du Triangle/Cologne Cartoon production in association with La Fabrique and in co-production with Entertainment Rights PLC/Kecskemétfilm/
France 3 Cinéma - Produced with the assistance of British Screen through its European Co-production Fund/Centre National de la Cinématographie/
Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen/Languedoc-Roussillon Région/
Hungarian Motion Picture Fund - In association with British Sky Broadcasting/
Canal+ - This film was made with the support of the Eurimages Fund of the Council of Europe
- Developed with the support of CARTOON
- Executive Producer
- Entertainment Rights PLC:
- Craig Hemmings
- Co-producer
- Ferenc Mikulás
- Line Producers
- Corine Marcel
- Ciara Breslin
- Production Managers
- Philippe Alessandri
- Veronika Vécsy
- Wendy Wolfcarius
- Andrea Wortham
- Post-production Manager
- Katia Besimensky
- Production Consultant
- Mike Robinson
- Assistant Director
- Henri Heidsieck
- Casting
- Steve Walsh
- Jamie Brown
- Rostrum Camera
- Zoltán Bacsó
- János Cseh
- Mihály Kovács
- Special Effects Design
- Paul van Geyt
- Anthony White
- Animation Directors
- Ginger Gibbons
- Henri Heidsieck
- Computer-Generated Sequences
- Jean-Paul Musso
- Character Design
- Jean-François Laguionie
- Hubert Chevillard
- Pénélope Paicheler
- Character Model Sheets
- Franck Vibert
- Character Artists
- Bérénice Belpaire
- Jean-Louis Garcia
- Chris Glynn
- Ionel Lucas
- Céline Papazian
- Colour Design
- Nicole Dufour
- Marie-Christine Campana
- Rolf J. Kirsch
- Key Animators
- Kamal Aitmihoub
- Herdis Albrecht
- Alan Andrews
- László Balajthy
- Tibor Beck
- Rita Bende
- Paul de Blieck
- Anna Brocket
- Kata Bross
- Christina Brossé
- Ronaldo Canfora
- Stella Dorin
- László Farkas
- Mark Francis
- Ivo Gantchev
- Roberto Jorge Garcia
- Nicolette Van Gendt
- Les Gibbard
- Renata Golaszewska
- Ulf Grenzer
- Tamás Gyapai
- Marianna Kertészné Hajdu
- Mark Robert Harris
- Holger Havlicek
- Edit Hernádi
- Lili Ilinova
- Carl van Isacker
- Nóra Javornicky
- József József
- Nevelina Kantsheva
- László Király
- Bea Kis-Kéry
- Zlati Krumov
- Nikolai Kutsukov
- John Lee
- Broniszlav Likomanov
- Katja Mankova
- Ann Marriott
- Roger McIntosh
- Patrick Michel
- Arpad Miklós
- Nikolai Neikov
- Ulrich Nitzsche
- Les Orton
- Iliana Panaiotova
- Panajot Panajotov
- John Allan Perkins
- Albena Petrova
- Gabor Pichler
- Juan Ramón Pina
- Robert Popov
- Anthony Power
- Jordan Radanov
- Virgilijus Sepetys
- José Solis
- Dimiter Stoilov
- János Szabó
- Edit Szalay
- Ildikó Táborita
- József Tari
- László Ujváry
- Franck Vibert
- Zoltán Vitális
- John Wilson
- Effects Animation
- Robert Byrne
- Layout Supervisor
- Hoël Caouissin
- Layout Artists
- László Balajthy
- Bérénice Belpaire
- Sue Butterworth
- Gilles Coutier
- László Király
- Hervé Leblan
- Zsuzsanna Nyúl
- Nick Roberts
- Jean-Michel Senasson
- Roland Toth
- Background Design
- Richard Mithouard
- Background Artists
- Corinne Duqueyroix
- Bénédicte Fages
- Valéry Huyghe
- Fabienne Lechevestrier
- Jean Palenstijn
- Anne-Cécile de Rumine
- Tilman Seelenmeyer
- Dorothea Tust
- Titles
- Jean-Paul Musso
- Test
- Opticals
- Test
- Optical Soundtrack
- Cinéstéréo
- Soloists
- Loy Ehrlich
- Didier Malherbe
- Dalibor Strunc
- Orchestrations
- Score:
- Alexandre Desplat
- Additional:
- Bernard Gérard
- Executive Music Producers
- Greg Rogers
- Ray Williams
- Soundtrack
- "Assimilate" by Paul Holmes, Robert Henry, Sally-Anne Marsh; "Where Do I Belong?" by Paul Holmes; "To Be King" by John Hurt; "We Are One" by Westlife
- Sound Design
- Nigel Holland
- Sound Engineer
- John Timperley
- Mixer
- Jean-Paul Loublier
- Recordist
- Gaël Nicolas
- Re-recording Mixers
- Adrian Rhodes
- Henry Dobson
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Nigel Holland
- Sound Editor
- Marvin Black
- Original Dialogue Recording/ADR
- Ian Grant
- Andrew Ebel
- Foley
- Artists:
- Julie Ankerson
- John Fewell
- Recordist:
- Trevor Swanscott
- Voice Cast
- English Language Version
- Matt Hill
- Kom
- John Hurt
- Chancellor Sebastian
- Michael York
- the king
- Sally-Anne Marsh
- Gina
- Rik Mayall
- Gerard
- Michael Gambon
- Master Martin
- Shirley Anne Field
- governess
- French Tickner
- Korkonak
- Diana Quick
- Princess Ida
- William Vanderpuye
- Lionel
- Paul Dobson
- Gavin
- Janyse Jaud
- Kom's mother
- Alix Bates
- Chris Connor
- Michael Dobson
- Anthony T. Jackson
- Alexander John
- Chantal Keast
- Miles Laddie
- Chris Lang
- George Potts
- Wendy Wolfcarius
- additional voices
- Peter Elliott
- monkey cries
- Voice Cast
- French Language Version
- Tara Römer
- Kom
- Nadia Farès
- Gina
- Pierre Arditi
- the king
- Michel Lonsdale
- Maître Flavius
- Jean Piat
- Chancellor Sérignole
- Patrick Préjean
- Gorine
- Lionel Melet
- Margad
- Ivanah Coppola
- Princess Ida
- Certificate
- PG
- Distributor
- Miracle Communications
- 7,067 feet
- 78 minutes 31 seconds
- Dolby
- In Colour
- French theatrical title
- Le Château des singes