France Feature Animation: 'Kerity: La Maison des Contes'

The universe of Kerity: La Maison des Contes refreshes the clearness or blurriness between the discern worlds of real and fantasy. More than forty characters from the realm of fairytales make an appearance in the animated film, but the presentation's plan to offering Nat a platform for personal and intellectual growth remains the focus.

The characters want their stories to be read by future generations, but before this can happen, the boy must willingly take on the responsibility and role of the heroic reader.

For example, when a wicked fairy, frustratedly shrinks Nathaniel down to the miniature size of the story characters, the boy charges himself with the role of the hero, and chivalrously seeks to evolve as one character would were he in an fairytale. In Kerity, children enable reading to find space for learning of psychological conflicts and battling for their outcome.

Bringing this film's story to the silver screen, director Dominique Monfery assembled a talented squad of artists and composers capable of rendering the fullness knowledge offers a young mind on the precipice of learning something new all over again. Rebecca Dautremer, the film's director in charge of original illustrations and artwork, specifically aimed to generate an environment benefiting of textured, voluminous, wallpaper-like designs. Some backgrounds use a warm coloring familiar in style to children's books/stories, while others used light, shading, and composition more akin to viewing the universe through the eyes of a certain character.

"For the library it had to be glowing, like a womb," Dautremer said of her work on Kerity. "[W]ith Dominique Monfery, we worked the red in different ways. For example, when Nathaniel comes home and discovers the library with terror, we have more hard red -- raw and aggressive. We chose a range that goes from pink to magenta. [....] When his big sister is facing the empty library, we turned the color to something more soft and neutral -- khaki's and a shade of orange.."

"Nothing was created in Photoshop," she warns of the artwork, emphasizing how backgrounds were crafted, framed like photographs, detailed and specific to the context. "Beyond color, what interests me is the composition and work on the light. I tried to get more special lights, reflections, and transparencies that perfect drawings. It is always through light that volume is added to things. And yet at times, I really wanted things almost hidden in shadow."

According to the director, Kerity: La Maison des Contes is meant to lend the feeling of a child fascinated with a world half-real and half-fantasy. When she was alive, the aunt's library introduced Nathaniel to the realm of fantasy; but now that she has passed on, those same stories aim to introduce him instead to reality.

Contributing to this transference of intimacy a child experiences when discovering where the boundaries lay between fantasy and reality is an impressive orchestral score by French composer Christophe Heral.

The original soundtrack to Kerity is full of a whimsical jauntiness, punchy with excitement, and perfect for a reluctant hero such as young Nat.

Heral wrote the soundtrack with the complement of a full orchestra and works to serenade viewers with the same magic and suspense the film hopes to contrive; a delicate embrace of all the frightening, dangerous, exciting, and peculiar happenings a child encounters through memorable storytelling.

The feature animation Kerity: La Maison des Contes includes physical production by Gaumont-Alphanim (France), Lanterna Magica (Italy), and La Fabrique (France), with distribution courtesy of Haut et Court (France) and international sales by Films Distirbution (France). The film's soundtrack is published by MovieScore Media (Sweden).