“The Illusionist” is a gentle, melancholy and nostalgic piece of filmmaking. The animated film is based on an unproduced script by Jacques Tati, the late French icon who can best be described as France’s Charlie Chaplin.

Like all Tati’s work (“Mr. Hulot’s Holiday,” “Play Time,” “Mon Uncle”), “The Illusionist” is essentially a silent film with all the physical and sight gags you’d expect. And though he has been gone for decades, Tati’s effervescent and amiable spirit infuses every inch of the sumptuous celluloid.

“The Illusionist” opens in Paris, where, thanks to a new fad called rock ’n’ roll, a magician — clearly Tati — is forced to accept ever-more-obscure and humiliating assignments, performing in front of minuscule audiences. (How much of Tati’s script is autobiographical, I wonder?)

At one such venue on the Scottish coast, the transient magician meets Alice, a young waif who is astonished at his powers and believes his enchantments real. They do not speak the same language, but their bond is so real that when the magician leaves for Edinburgh, Alice stows away on the ship to be with him. In the big city, among a community of destitute vaudevillians, Alice adopts the magician as a surrogate father. She cooks and cleans for him, while he finds work where he can get it. Much of his hard-earned and meager salary is spent on ever-more-extravagant gifts for the young girl who is his greatest fan — gifts she believes he conjures into existence just for her.

To reveal that magic is counterfeit would be to rob her of her greatest enchantment and him of his greatest admirer. But at some point, all fathers, whether literal or adoptive, are abandoned. What happens when young girls blossom into womanhood and leave behind their make-believe?

Don’t tell Sylvain Chomet, who also directed the sumptuous “The Triplets of Belleville,” that traditional 2-D animation is dead. “The Illusionist” lacks the bombast of most modern animated fare and is all the more appealing for it. The film, with an immaculate attention to detail, is sumptuous, surreal and exquisite. The characters, many of whom are eccentrics with faces mirroring Fellini’s grotesques, move with a sublime, otherworldly fluidity. “The Illusionist” is a charming anthropological feast for any Francophile. Chomet even manages to summon an Edinburgh that is peculiarly and deliciously French.

Ultimately, “The Illusionist” is quite a bittersweet film. It confronts the dark side of broken dreams, and even the desire to end this life and thus one’s perceived irrelevance. While some characters face the final credits with new hope, others ride into a cold and rainy night, wiser and lonelier.

But do not let this confession dissuade you from seeing this film. Charming and graceful, “The Illusionist” tells a gorgeous tale of love and loss with delicate whimsy and tender humor.

details

THE ILLUSIONIST

Cast: Voices of Jean-Claude Donda, Eilidh Rankin

Director: Sylvain Chomet

Rated: PG (for thematic elements, smoking and a near suicide)

Running Time: 1 hour, 22 minutes

GRADE: A

Photo by