FESTIVAL REVIEW
Julián opens with its titular character, a seven-year-old Dominican American boy, arriving in Brooklyn to spend the summer with Carmela (Milcania Diaz-Rojas), whom he hasn’t seen in years. Before leaving on a work trip, Julián’s father tells Carmela that the boy is “different,” nothing like he was at the same age. She does not quite understand what he means and initially tries to connect with her grandson through the things she assumes a boy might enjoy, giving him baseball cards and encouraging him to play basketball with the other boys on the block. Julián (Knyght Darius Jack) would much rather draw fish, cover himself in anything that sparkles, and get to know the three girls nearby drawing mermaids across the sidewalk. When they tell him about the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, he becomes determined to make a costume and join them. Adapted from Jessica Love’s picture book Julián Is a Mermaid, although extending the story that took place in one afternoon into a full summer, following Julián as he finds the confidence to be himself and Carmela as she comes to understand and accept her grandson.
In some ways, Julián feels like the film Pixar has spent much of the 2020s trying to make: personal, gentle, and unmistakably queer-coded. It is more direct about its intentions, even if it never reaches that studio’s almost effortless ability to create emotional investment. The lovely hand-drawn animation feels warm and alive, especially in the sequences where Julián imagines his drawings coming to life and interacting with him. La-Nai Gabriel’s score moves gently between flowing piano, guitar, and warm strings, adding much of the film’s tenderness, while small bits of comedy, including Julián desperately trying to hide food from his grandmother and making an enormous mess in the bathroom, keep the story playful.
The problem is that a picture book built around such a simple idea inevitably needs more when stretched to nearly 90 minutes, and Julián never quite finds it. Carmela receives the most substantial development outside her grandson, particularly through her friends’ judgment and her gradual return to swimming, but both ideas could have used more attention. The three girls Julián befriends are similarly thinly drawn, despite hints that they face their own difficulties, while the boys who briefly bully him disappear immediately. The film offers several opportunities to explore how Julián’s experience connects with those around him, yet it tends to introduce them and move on.
Still, Julián has plenty of charm, particularly in its warm animation and good sense of humor. Its simplicity may work particularly well for young children, but it also keeps the film from finding the deeper emotional pull its images continually promise.
- Where to watch
- Coming soon
- Where to watch
- Coming soon
Play trailer
- Original title
- Julián
- Director
- Guillaume Lorin, Mark Mullery, Louise Bagnall
- Cast
- Knyght Darius Jack, Milcania Diaz-Rojas, Zariah Georgia Ellis, Emma So, Avery Star Pryce Tibayan, Kim Roberts, Stephanie Herrera, Yanna McIntosh
- Screenwriter
- Juliany Taveras
- Composer
- La-Nai Gabriel
- Editor
- Owen Peters, Richie Cody
- Country
- Language
- English