I once again found myself watching a dubbed version of an animated feature, and I once again wasn’t too bothered by it. In my defence, the dubbed version was the only version available to me, and I only found out about any other version when trying to match up the performers to their roles. Anyway, as I have said many times before, animated movies can, in my view, be equally enjoyable in dubbed or subtitles versions, but please know that I would always go for the original language version if I was given a choice. This review will be naming the cast members I heard delivering the dialogue in English.
Sasha (Chloé Dunn) is a young woman who has retained faith in her explorer grandfather, despite his disappearance on a journey to the North Pole. It is the 19th century, and such a trip is even more perilous and uncharted than it is today. A reward is put out on the lost ship, with everyone assuming that the mission was a failure. Sasha thinks they are all wrong though, and she runs away to buy passage on a ship that will take her to the frozen region where she believes her grandfather ended his journey.
Written by Fabrice de Costil, Claire Paoletti, and Patricia Valeix, this animated tale foregoes easy jokes and spectacle in favour of an exploration of self-belief and courage. It illustrates what it takes to be an explorer in a way that avoids the more easygoing, and childish, view of that lifestyle, yet does so while remaining firmly attached to a young lead character who has the benefit of youthful enthusiasm and optimism on their side.
Director Rémi Chayé has been involved with one or two other celebrated animated films, and he seems happy to deliver something that appears to have been made with a lot of care and love, despite making stylistic and tonal choices that stop it from being an easy option when you’re after some family viewing. Very much like a beautiful picture book throughout, this unfolds at a relatively languid pace, compared to many other films aimed at younger audiences, and the adventuring side of things is depicted with a healthy lack of sensationalism.
Dunn is good in the lead role, and she heads up a cast that includes Antony Hickling, Tom Perkins, Peter Hudson, and Martin Vaughan Lewis. While I am unfamiliar with these performers in other roles, they all do well here, and there’s no distraction that can come from trying to put a face to a celebrity voice.
I enjoyed this, but most of the time I was admiring it more as an interesting piece of art than an entirely satisfying movie. It is definitely worth your time, especially to anyone who has seen this style, or something close to it, in other features, but I probably won’t go out of my way to recommend or revisit it.
6/10
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