a review of 原始星球

#22: Fantastic Planet (streaming on Mubi) It's taken me the better part of 25 years to get around to seeing this one. Back in the VHS/DVD era, it was always shelved along with the rest of the anime/"adult" animation titles, and although I couldn't quite put my finger on it, something about it always seemed a bit offputting to me. Watching it now, there's definitely something creepifying about the general art and themes. But maybe I've gotten to a point where I'm just happy to see something that hasn't been fed through the nostalgia machine over and over again, so the overall sense of disorientation and unfamiliarity kind of worked for me. Mubi had the original French version (subtitled), which gave it the same feel as looking at old Heavy Metal comics. Combined with the human refugee story, it reminded me a lot of Snowpiercer, thematically. It seems like there's just this vein of French SF that is superficially similar to American dystopic/post-apocalyptic SF, but even more disturbing and alien. I wonder if part of it comes from the German occupation during WWII, or if there's something else that explains it.