Attila Marcel

The imaginative whimsy of Belleville Rendez-Vous and The Illusionist is both present and right in Sylvain Chomet’s live-action debut, a gentle charmer with dark elements in which composition plays a central role.

So does the mutely expressive Guillaume Gouix, on double duty as both the silent piano sensation trying to unlock repressed memories and the wrestler father he suspects had a hand in his mother’s death. Tuneful flashbacks supply fantastical punctuation to a film that sees Chomet pay elaborate homage to everyone from Jacques Demy to Marcel Proust.