aka Azur and Asmar: The Prince’s Quest
(Azur et Asmar)
France/Belgium/Spain. 2006.
Crew
Director/Screenplay – Michel Ocelot, Producer – Christophe Rossignon, Music – Gabriel Yared, Animation – Mac Guff Ligne (Supervisors – Pierrick Brault & Etienne Pecheux), Animation Supervisor – Laurent de la Chapelle, Production Design – Anne-Lise Lourdelet-Koehler. Production Company – Nord-Quest Production/Mac Guff Ligne/Studio O/France 3 Cinema/Rhone-Alpes Cinema/Artemis Productions/S2 International/Zahorimedia/Intuitions Films/Lucky Red/Canal+/TPS Star.
Plot
In France, the Saracen Jenane has been hired as nurse for the infant Azur. She raises him alongside her own son Asmar where the two boys become fascinated with the fairytale she tells of the Djinn Fairy who waits to be rescued. The boys play together as they grow up. Disliking this, Azur’s father decides to send Azur away to a tutor, while Jenane and Asmar are callously thrown out of the house. As a grown man, Azur decides to travel to Arabia in search of the Djinn Fairy, seeking to free and marry her. However, he is swept overboard and washed up on the beach. Everyone he tries to get help from runs in fear until he learns that his having blue eyes is regarded as a curse. He pretends to be blind, gaining the help of the roguish beggar Crapoux as he seeks clues leading to the Djinn Fairy. Azur then hears the voice of Jenane and bangs on her door. She has become a wealthy merchant and welcomes him in. He arrives just as Asmar is about to set out on his own quest for the Djinn Fairy. As Jenane offers to finance an expedition for Azur, a rivalry grows between he and Asmar.
When it comes to naming the greatest animators of all time, Hayao Miyazaki is right at the top of everybody’s list. Second on that list in my book would be the far less known Michel Ocelot. The French Ocelot first gained international acclaim with the hit of Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998) based on folk tales he learned growing up in Guinea. Subsequently, Ocelot made the equally delightful animated likes of Princes and Princesses (1999), Azur and Asmar, Tales of the Night (2011) and Dilili in Paris (2018), as well as returned to tell further tales of Kirikou with Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) and Kirikou and the Men and Women (2012).
Ocelot had previously made the move from hand-drawn to computer animation with some scenes in Kirikou and the Wild Beasts, but Azur and Asmar is the point where he fully embraces the form, There is still the same two-dimensional effect of his earlier films where action moves from side to side across the frame, but more of a multi-plane depth to scenes. On the other hand, computer animation of the 2000s was still finding its feet and some of the characters come across as looking a little flat. Not that the film is not impressive in every other way, especially when it comes to the backgrounds.
Azur visits Jenane in her gardenAzur meets the Scarlet Lion
Michel Ocelot’s films of the 2000s onwards have expanded beyond the simple hand-drawn outlines of his early work to come with exquisite detail placed into their backgrounds. Azur and Asmar gains its life once it arrives in Arabia (it is not specified which country, although presumably one on the North African coast). Ocelot places a great into depictions of the cultural world Azur enters into – the Muslim architecture of the temples and buildings, the colour and vibrancy of the spice bazaars and dyer’s souks, the beauty of Jenane’s garden. You only needs contrast the cultural immersion here to the version of Arabia in Disney’s Aladdin (1992) a few years earlier, which made zero effort to inform itself about the culture and peoples it appropriated and traded wholly in terms of clichés.
Azur and Asmar doesn’t quite hit the heights of other Ocelot films like Kirikou and the Sorceress, Princes and Princesses or Dilili in Paris. Part of this is that the CGI animation is a little off and looks flat. The pacing is a slower than you might get in a mainstream animated film. The other issue might be the structuring of the story. Fully three-quarters of the story is taken up with the backstory and Azur’s exploration of Arabia, before we actually get to the fairytale adventure. You feel that the quest and adventure aspect should have been the emphasis of the film but this is quickly hurried through towards the end of the film. Nevertheless, these are minor issues and the journey, the charms of Azur meeting the princess and the colour and detail of the backgrounds make for a standout film.