Dimitri Planchon and Jean-Paul Guigue’s Blaise takes something very ordinary – the fear of saying the wrong thing and the need to be liked – and turns it into one of the strangest and funniest animated films in recent years. Beneath its dry humour and absurd situations lies a painfully honest portrait of people who no longer know how to communicate with each other, even within their own families.

The Savage family lives in constant discomfort with themselves and with each other. Carole desperately wants approval from her employees, Jacques drifts through life feeling unnoticed, and Blaise, their teenage son, has become so afraid of standing out that he simply agrees with everyone around him. The film finds humour and sadness in these characters, who spend so much time trying to fit in that they barely know who they really are; their inability to connect becomes the heart of the story.

Blaise begins to change after meeting Joséphine, a girl who seems just as lost and uncertain as he is. For the first time, he stops simply following along and suddenly throws himself into something reckless and chaotic. The film turns this change into comedy and discomfort, showing how the desperate need to finally feel seen or important can easily spiral into something irrational and dangerous.

One of the most interesting parts of Blaise is its unusual animation style. Using cut-out paper designs and digital collage, the film creates a world that looks realistic at first glance, but always feels slightly strange underneath. Faces, proportions, and backgrounds never fully line up in a natural way, giving everything an unsettling feeling. I found that this visual awkwardness fits the characters perfectly as the world around them feels familiar, yet constantly disconnected, as if reality itself is slightly out of place. Planchon and Guigue avoid overemphasising movement in their animation and scenes are composed like theatre tableaux or comic panels.

Blaise is about communication, or more precisely, how it breaks down, with each character locked inside their own version of themselves. Carole constantly changes her tone mid-sentence, correcting herself as she goes, showing how anxious she is about being judged. Jacques speaks in long monologues and Blaise avoids expressing any opinion at all, believing silence is the safest option.

Despite its comedic surface, Blaise is quietly bleak. Its humour is sharp, often dark, and based on social observation. Much of the satire comes from just how ordinary the characters are; recognisably modern people driven by fear of judgement and the pressure to fit in. The animation style makes this feeling even stronger because the characters are made from photographic fragments and edited images; they look real and artificial at the same time.

As the story goes on, Blaise’s growing relationship with Joséphine leads him away from any real sense of connection and deeper into confusion about who he is. Mixing comic book style, theatre-like staging, and experimental animation, Blaise does something unusual: it transforms misunderstanding into the foundation of its story. And what remains is a portrait of people trying to be understood, while not fully understanding themselves.

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Written by Maggie Gogler

Featured image courtesy of Cannes Film Festival

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