Animated classic 'The Illusionist' screening in Whanganui next week

Edinburgh in the late 1950s is the setting for this animated film screening on Monday night.

Whanganui Film Society's screening next Monday is animated classic The Illusionist (L'illusionniste).

Based on a script by Jacques Tati, this animated feature from Sylvain Chomett, director of The Triplets of Belleville, is the sweet and funny tale of a magician travelling in Scotland and the impressionable young girl who adopts him as her dad.

"It's the tale of a music hall magician who travels (with truculent white rabbit) from Paris to London to Scotland in pursuit of ever-smaller stages for his one-man show," wrote Bill Gosden in NZ International Film Festival 2010.

"Arriving on a far-flung Scottish isle on the very day that electricity first goes live, he finds himself playing adopted father to a sweetly wilful, impressionable young woman who thinks his magic is real.

"Set largely in Edinburgh in the late 50s, as vaudeville dwindles and rock 'n' roll and television surge forth, The Illusionist is like Triplets' wistful twin, precise and drily comic in the manner of Tati, but glowing with nostalgia for the antics of the old variety entertainers.

"It's also an exquisitely rendered declaration of love for Scotland and for Edinburgh in particular.

"Chomet fell for the city when he presented Triplets at the Edinburgh Film Festival and settled there soon after.

"This film is steeped in its Georgian loveliness and Gothic splendours, the mists and shifting lights and shadows."

The Illusionist is the first of three animated films the society will screen this month and there will be a double bill screening on April 30.

Memberships are available online at Whanganui Film Society or at the theatre before screenings.

The Illusionist screens at the Davis Theatre, Whanganui Regional Museum, Watt St, at 7pm on Monday, April 9.