The year is 1941, but you'd never suspect that because here, France is trapped in an alternate nineteenth century. In 1870, Emperor Napoleon III oversaw a scientific and military experiment to create an army of super-soldiers to wage war, but he then dies in an explosion staged to destroy the disappointing results. His successor then struck a deal to avert war with Prussia, securing the throne for the House of Bonaparte. Then, over the next six decades, many renowned scientists vanished and France's environment went to hell. During one ill-fated experiment then, young April barely escapes with her talking pet cat Darwin (the voice of Phillipe Katerine) after her parents are seemingly killed. Eleven more years after that, a now-adult April (the voice of Marion Cotillard) herself has become a scientist and with the help of Darwin and sympathetic criminal Julius (the voice of Marc-Andre Grondin), she sets out to finally discover her parents' fate.
April and the Extraordinary World is what a threesome between steampunk, a Marie Curie biopic and The Adventures of Tintin would create. As bizarre as that combination sounds, the result is absolutely beguiling. Directors Christian Desmares and Franck Enkinci, with co-writer Benjamin Legrand, seem to have had a fully in-sync meeting of the minds while concocting this most imaginatively original narrative, and Desmares and Enkinci (with their animators' help) unfold that narrative very enthusiastically while very lucidly working the technical aspects around it for a genuinely absorbing whole. The result is not particularly emotional but nor is it meant to be; this story is really more of a mystery than a drama, which nonetheless increases the film's uniqueness. However, its familial themes are still wisely kept at the forefront even while we're encouraged to follow the breadcrumbs April's fact-finding missing leaves for her and us.
Additionally, the visuals are dazzlingly detailed and rendered, Valentin Hadjadj provides a richly classical French score, it's crisply edited and the voice cast all evidently enjoyed themselves. April and the Extraordinary World took me along with its protagonist into that Extraordinary World.
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