Dandelion's Odyssey

Bluesky

Animation has been taking a very dim view of mankind lately. Humans are barely present – and in no way positive – in The Wild Robot, and they appear to have completely fallen to environmental disaster in Oscar-winner Flow. Dandelion's Odyssey goes one step further and actually shows the Apocalyptic moment we destroy ourselves, via a giant mushroom cloud. This event is witnessed by four dandelion seeds which, despite the devastation, are still determined to find somewhere to put down their roots.

This is the beginning of a long journey, which has a similar trajectory to Flow, though a radically different animated style, as the seeds – or achenes, for those who wish to be botanically correct – are carried along by various elements, while encountering other surviving creatures along the way.

Animator Momoko Seto primarily deserves praise for imbuing each seed with a distinctive personality so that although the film is without dialogue we always know which of our adventurers we’re observing. One looks pretty much as you might imagine a single dandelion seed to appear, while a second’s feathery propeller droops. A third boasts a seed that’s twice the size of the others while the poor old fourth has already been in the wars and has only four of its propeller fronds left. There’s an almost Muppet-like quality to the quartet as we watch them look after one another as best they can as the journey continues and we share their emotions from joy to sadness.

Seto mixes the hyper-real with the fantastical as the seedlings drift away from our planet and into a strange new universe with curious environments. Her animation features a lot of time-lapse work, bringing home the general majesty of nature as we watch how a dandelion blooms and seeds or see ferns burst into life. Everything is textured and tactile, so that it feels like we could almost reach out and touch the shiny, whiskery skin of a blue beetle or the glistening green of a frog.

As with all good adventurers, adversity is never far away, whether it’s creatures that could harm our little gang of wanderers or the natural environment. Sequences in rushing water suffer a little from the fact that Seto attempts to retain the seeds’ ‘fluffiness’ even when they’re wet, which doesn’t feel quite right given the general ‘real’ feeling of the film otherwise. Younger audiences, however, are unlikely to be fazed by that, although the pacing may be more of a problem. While never less than visually arresting, and with score and sound design from Quentin Sirjacq and Nicholas Becker that is evocative and immersive, the action is rather languorous in places and sometimes leaves the seeds taking something of a back seat. Still, although it was tucked away at Cannes as the closing film of Critics’ Week, it’s likely to attract a lot more interest on the festival circuit in the coming months, like the seeds at its heart, I’d say it’s a grower.

Source