Le Tableau

The notion of living art, of statues and paintings that spring to life, or film heroes who suddenly step out of the silver screen rests on an age-old fantasy, the seductive fantasy of being able to breathe life into things or creatures that we have dreamed up and created, exactly as we wished them to be. Jean-François Laguionie’s “Le Tableau” fulfils this fantasy precisely. Characters in a painting come to life – and are revealed immediately, to be no more refined than any flesh and blood character one might meet. They are bossy, vain and inconsiderate, and they have an inferiority complex, too, and feel like misfits – because their creator left certain strokes of his artist’s brush unfinished. So they set out in search of the artist, who they hope will finish what he started and bring them to perfection. A fast-paced, adventurous quest begins, as the characters spring from their canvas into the studio then into other canvases. But when they find their creator, their disappointment is bitter. For the artist deliberately left his characters incomplete and has no intention of making them “perfect”. So they take their fate into their own hands, in order to fight discrimination. In the thought-provoking final scene, one of the characters looks up the artist once again, in an effort to make him change his mind. In answer to his question, as to where she is headed, she replies, “I intend to find out, who painted THIS picture”. (as)