French fairy tale Azur and Asmar depicts quest for the princes’ bride
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
KID 'N PLAY: Azur (top) and Asmar as boys
The French fairy tale Azur and Asmar uses cutting-edge digital animation to replicate centuries-old artistic styles. For his fourth cartoon feature, awesomely named French director Michel Ocelot crafts backgrounds that evoke medieval tapestries or illuminated manuscripts. You can imagine seeing images from Azur and Asmar hanging in a museum, only the figures within them move and talk.
Like one of Scheherezade’s tales from the Arabian Nights, Azur and Asmar presents a classic storybook quest. Beginning in an unidentified European country, the film depicts two boys: blue-eyed, privileged Azur and dusky Asmar, the son of Azur’s nursemaid. Azur and Asmar grow up literally suckling at the same breast and hearing the nanny’s tales of her homeland’s mythic Djinn Fairy, a magic princess held in an impregnable prison. They become close friends, despite comically frequent arguments, until Azur’s father callously sends his son off to a distant tutor and casts out Asmar and the nursemaid.
Entranced by his nanny’s stories of the Djinn Fairy, Azur travels as an adult to Asmar’s home country, where the Muslim natives treat him as an outcast because of his blue eyes. Azur undergoes sharp reversals of fortune before reuniting with Asmar, and the two become rivals who each seek to find, free and wed the Djinn Fairy.
