Eye For Film >> Movies >> Blaise (2026) Film Review
Blaise (voiced by Timéo) is a typically gauche 16-year-old, not particularly comfortable in his own skin and reticent around others. But, as Dimitri Planchon and Jean-Paul Guige’s astringently absurdist animation shows, the apple has not fallen far from the tree as his parents are, arguably, even more dysfunctional than he is. He may only be a teenager on screen but Blaise has come a long way since he started out as a single comic strip created by Planchon for French magazine Fluide Glacial.
Planchon soon found himself with a page to play with and, more recently Blaise has also had his own TV series in his French homeland, on which Planchon collaborated with Guige. Now, at feature length, the pair have an opportunity to dig into the whole family’s foibles, which illustrate the perils of going with the flow.
The animation style is distinctive as the pair use photo montage for the characters, which, despite dancing lightly on the edge of caricature, makes them feel eerily real. One of the brickbats thrown at CGI animation is that characters’ eyes tend to look dead, and the opposite is true here, with Planchon and Guige achieving a piercing gaze that looks right back at us. The other element that the technique has in spades is texture, with all the various items of clothing feeling tactile – something heightened by the fact that the general look is quite stripped back.
When Blaise reluctantly ends up at a party, he is even more surprised when he catches the eye of the older Josephine (Nina Blanc-Francard), unwilling to tell her the truth about himself, he ends up being dropped off in a sketchy part of the city far from home. But with revolution in the air, that could soon be the least of his problems.
His mum Carole (voiced by French A-lister Léa Drucker) is just as lacking in assertiveness as her son. Arriving at her new job in the suitably dry gravel and pebble department, she is soon taking miscommunication to new heights with her staff with Planchon expertly putting her at constant cross purposes without it feeling forced. Blaise’s dad Jacques (voiced by Jacques Gamblin), meanwhile, might just be the worst of the lot, seeing a visit to his son’s school shrink to offload his own problems.
Planchon employs desert-dry humour of discomfort in his scripting, which does take a bit of getting used to and won’t be for everyone. Traces of the episodic form remain in this feature as some scenes have the feel of independent “sketches”. Planchon shows plenty of skill as he layers on the absurdity until several of the plotlines begin to coalesce. Although these characters are pushed to extremes of awkwardness, their problems are rooted in the sort of everyday societal gaffes most of us can relate to, which is what makes them fun. And while nothing for the family might quite slot into place the way they wish, the jaunty, jazzy score from Alexis Pecharman and Denis Vautrin is a perfect fit.
Reviewed on: 16 May 2026
