A Cat In Paris isn't the typical Disney-style animated feature with cuddly characters and a storyline steeped in sentimentality. The cartoon borrows as much from film noir as it does from The Aristocats. Text Geoffrey Macnab
It's about a cat with a double life. By day, Dino is the beloved pet of lonely girl Zoe, whose police officer mother Jeanne works punishing hours and whose father was gunned down by gangsters. By night, Dino takes to the rooftops of Paris with Nico, a professional burglar. Two young Flemish animators, Pieter Samyn and Pascal Vermeersch, were a key part of the Cat Squad, bringing Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol's bold and offbeat movie to life.
As the title might hint, A Cat In Paris is a French production but it's one with a strong Flemish involvement. Producer Annemie Degryse of Lunamine was aboard from the outset. She recruited Samyn and Vermeersch to join the team of animators at top French animation studio Folimage, in Bourg-lès-Valence.
First, the animators had to prove their mettle. They were asked to draw a sequence showing the cat and the burglar running on the rooftops. The directors liked their work and hired them immediately. Samyn and Vermeersch were then invited to Valence. Samyn recalls that during their time in Valence, it rained well nigh incessantly. Not that they had much time for sightseeing. ‘We went straight ahead into the animation,’ says Vermeersch.
Hardboiled style
The French animators already working on A Cat In Paris clearly recognised their new Belgian colleagues as kindred spirits. Any cultural differences were quickly ironed over.‘Oh, animators are all the same,’ Vermeersch says. ‘They like drawing. They are very into their own world. It's kind of like a monastery I suppose. ’When they were drawing, the animators were so intensely focused on their work that they hardly noticed the world around them. They'd be listening to music on their MP3 players and ignoring all outside distractions.‘Animation is concentration,’ Vermeersch declares. ‘Once you've started a scene, you have to dive in. ’The directors Felicioli and Gagnol were just as intense as the animators they had hired. Samyn likens them to Siamese twins and adds: ‘they knew what they wanted.’ The two directors were reclusive. If you saw one, you saw the other. They refused to give feedback to the animators unless they were both present.
Vermeersch notes the way that the two directors finished each other's sentences, as if by telepathy. There was no sense of creative friction between them. Their style was instantly recognisable. Even their shorts, for example Les tragedies minuscules (made way back in 2001) featured the same angular faces and Dr Caligari-like buildings as A Cat In Paris. ‘What interested me enormously was the story behind the feature film,’ Vermeersch recalls. ‘This was nothing like I had seen before in feature films. It had a hardboiled style which was great.’
Close harmony
A Cat In Paris touches on armed robbery, death and bereavement. Nonetheless, Vermeersch and Samyn say that the original story was ‘much more dark.’ The script was softened for the sake of financiers worries that its noirish undertow would put off the kids. The film was made at breakneck pace. Each animator was required to provide 15 seconds a week of hand-drawn animated footage.
‘Oh, animators are all the same. They like drawing. They are very into their own world. It's kind of like a monastery I suppose’ – Pascal Vermeersch
‘That's quite a lot,’ Vermeersch notes. ‘But, I must say, it was very well prepared. You can see immediately that Folimage are experienced. They've done some feature animation before.’Samyn, working on his first ever animated feature, struggled initially to complete his 15 seconds quota. ‘It was not only the animation but the drawings themselves had to be cleaned up in a very particular way… there was a very clean drawing line which wasn't close to my natural way of drawing. ’Vermeersch was ‘a little bit faster.’ He'd worked on features before, such as the Oscar-nominated The Secrets Of Kells.
However, he points out The Secret Of Kells was very different from A Cat In Paris. ‘The French are more in close harmony while the Irish are more extrovert and expressive,’ he suggests of the differences between the animation teams in the two countries.
Raoul Servais
Both Flemish animators relished their time at Valence. They were only in France for a week or two before returning to Belgium, where they were able to complete their part of the animation from their offices at home. The directors were in constant touch with them, explaining exactly what they wanted.The Belgians are artists in their own right. However, they were happy to follow the cues provided by their French directors. On such a complex venture as a feature animation, it helps to have a clear sense of where you are going and why. ‘The worst thing that can happen is a director will say let's try this or try that,’ Vermeersch says.
Samyn and Vermeersch are both graduates of KASK – Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. Vermeersch left the school back in 1998, just as Samyn enrolled. Long before their college days, both were interested in animation. Samyn, who comes from a family of teachers, was keen on drawing as a kid and cites an exhibition of the work of Raoul Servais as a major spur to his decision to become an animator. ‘Before that, I didn't realise you could make a study of it.’ His parents were initially suspicious of such a strange-seeming career. However, they eventually relented when they saw the level of his commitment. Vermeersch relished watching old Disney cartoons as a kid. He began his studies in graphic design. ‘Same story... I didn't know you could study animation!’ He soon switched disciplines, enrolling instead in the animation department. His moment of epiphany came when he saw an animated short by another student called Going Home On The Morning Train by Stefan Vermeulen. ‘I was blown away! I thought wow! This was something I wanted to do. It's storytelling, it's drawing. There's music involved and sound.
’A dozen years after finishing his studies, he believes he now has the experience to switch styles and to work in different environments, whether with Irish directors like Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey on The Secret Of Kells or the French team on A Cat In Paris. Alongside his animation, he also works as an illustrator. ‘In the beginning, after graduation, it was a hard time finding jobs but you get to know people...and they know you. It's a strange word “networking”; but it works.’As for Samyn, he combines teaching at Sint-Lucas in Ghent and working on comics with his animation.
Win-win situation
Having worked together once, the two animators say they'd relish collaborating again. Yes, they would both like to be in charge of their own animated projects rather than working as hired guns on other artists' projects. ‘But when you're involved in a production like A Cat In Paris, you know that you are subservient,’ Samyn reflects. ‘From my point of view, it's contributing to your own development,’ Vermeersch says of working as part of a team on a big international feature. ‘You can learn a lot from those productions. Then you can use that information on your own. ’‘It's a win-win situation,’ Samyn agrees. ‘Once you have that experience, they can't take it away from you.’
A Cat In Paris is part of the Berlinale’s Generation K+ this year