At once recognizable and improbable, sketchy and detailed, Edinburgh is, the illusionist aside, Chomet’s main character. (The movie ends with the shop lights on Princes Street going out.) Tatischeff and Alice move into a hotel full of depressed circus types and separately explore a city populated by cheerful drunks. Alice longs for new, grown-up clothes and, as if by magic, the illusionist provides them. (Unknown to her, and a source of comedy for us, he’s been working nights in a garage and doing department-store sale demos, for extra money.)
Although more wistful than the hyper-energetic Triplets, The Illusionist is equally comic. (As in Tati or Triplets, there is far more noise than dialogue.) No less impressive than Chomet’s character animation is his sense of timing. For its 80 minutes, the movie creates the illusion that not just Tati but his form of cerebral slapstick lives. Late in the movie, M. Tatischeff leaves Alice a note, explaining, “Magicians do not exist.” The Illusionist means to demonstrate that they do.
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