OVERVIEW
Adapted from Dimitri Planchon’s three-volume graphic novel series, Blaise centers on a fourteen-year-old with no real foothold in the world, an absent father who never fully matured, and a mother who has buried her own desires for so long she has forgotten she had a life of her own. The family’s fragile routine is shaken when a school counselor suggests Blaise might be better served by a special institution, forcing all three to reconsider the life they have accepted so far.
BACKGROUND
Selected for the ACID sidebar at Cannes 2026, Blaise is an adaptation and extension of Dimitri Planchon’s comic book of the same name, published by Glénat between 2009 and 2012. The original one-page strips earned recognition at France’s most prestigious comics festival before making the jump to a five-minute daily animated series on ARTE, one of the main Franco-German public television channels. The feature retains the same photomontage visual approach Planchon developed across both formats, in which characters are built from cut-up photographs pieced together. The film is co-directed by Jean-Paul Guigue, who worked on the animation of the highly acclaimed Persepolis, and features the original voice cast from the series.
THE REVIEW
To address the big elephant in the room first: yes, the aesthetic looks strange when judged from still images alone. But don’t worry, it doesn’t take long to settle into it, and once you do, you may find that the intended balance between realism and cartoonish exaggeration is not only strangely appealing but also captures each character in delightful ways. It is impressive how much Dimitri Planchon and Jean-Christophe Guigue are able to extract from limited movement, partly through the character designs but also through clever staging and writing.
The voice cast adds plenty of personality, but the film shines most in its writing. The jokes are frequent and mostly land, especially the recurring bit about the fathers visiting the school counselor and the father’s relationship with his mother. The many misunderstandings are also cleverly constructed, giving the film a farcical energy without losing sight of its themes.
Behind the absurd escapades, Blaise takes aim at the modern French bourgeoisie and its family dynamics. The mother has worked hard to climb a male-dominated professional hierarchy, only to find herself trapped by another version of the same system that once kept women out. The father, meanwhile, is so cowardly that he can’t even convince himself who he truly loves and who he wishes he were with.
None of its messages is necessarily new, yet they are intelligently handled, hardly in obvious ways. The titular character is the least interesting person on screen, an observer of the events around him and the colorful people that populate this world. Still, the film does a commendable job coordinating its disparate storylines and connecting them in surprising, creative ways.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Don’t let the strange character design discourage you. Blaise is a delightful, clever satire, and though it doesn’t break new ground in its critique, it entertains with its absurdities while poking fun at the worst kind of human beings: the middle class.
- Where to watch
Coming soon
Coming soon
- Original title
- Blaise
- Director
- Jean-Paul Guigue, Dimitri Planchon
- Cast
- Léa Drucker, Jacques Gamblin, Timéo, Nina Blanc-Francard
- Screenwriter
- Dimitri Planchon, Clémence Lebatteux
- Country
- Language
- French