A Sublime Dive into Childhood’s Sacred Terrain
Directed by Mailys VALLADE and Liane-Cho HAN
Cannes Film Festival Special Screening
By Alexandra I. Mas
At Cannes, this sanctum of dreams and cinematic miracles, poetry becomes an act of resistance. And in this animated adaptation of Amélie Nothomb’s La Métaphysique des Tubes, poetry takes the form of pastel brushstrokes, whispering narration, and an existential journey wrapped in the soft halo of infancy.
This is not just a film—it’s a balm, a gentle remedy for those suffering from a deficiency in wonder, from an ache for the forgotten language of their inner child. A film to watch and rewatch whenever the need to reconnect with that part of oneself becomes vital. Whether you are a wide-eyed child or a weary adult, this film reaches into the very essence of being.
The Divine Gaze of a Baby-God
Adapted from Nothomb’s semi-autobiographical novel, the story follows Amélie, not yet the author we know, but a divine infant who believes herself to be God, as we probably all once did. And for a moment, she is. In the lush springtime of 1968 Japan, wrapped in the sensory tapestry of her earliest memories, baby Amélie lives in a world where the universe spins entirely around her.
This is a hymn to the pre-reasoned era, to that sacred time when a child’s perception is vast, unfiltered, metaphysical. Her fall from divinity, when she discovers language, pleasure, pain, and eventually mortality, is portrayed not as a loss, but as the beginning of becoming human. Pleasure… that sin which makes us more human than any divine gift. This is consciousness – no ego, no fear, only awareness of the body as a tool. It is, at first, just a tube. And then, in the simple joy of tasting white chocolate, the universe shifts, the senses awaken, and so does the human. And so begins her descent: from all-knowing, tube-like passivity to vibrant, fragile, magnificent life. Ego enters, the spirit enters form, and Earth becomes the most beautiful place to experience it all, to rise as a human.
A Cartoon, Yes – One That Stirs the Soul
Rendered in luminous, hand-drawn animation, the film’s visual world glows with warmth and subtle surrealism. The color palette is saturated but delicate, a soft-edged ode to memory, where even sadness is imbued with tenderness. Every stroke seems designed to soothe rather than shock, to rekindle softness in hardened viewers.
The storytelling flows with a gentle rhythm, from divine detachment to the chaos of love, family, friendship, and finally, loss. But more than loss, this film is about acceptance: of incompleteness, of being human.
This cartoon is for those who’ve grown cynical, numb, or hurried. For the adult who has forgotten how to marvel. For the adult who has forgotten how to mourn gently.
Set against the serene backdrop of Japanese gardens, koi ponds, and a first-encounter springtime, La Métaphysique des Tubes confronts existential questions with the innocence of a child and the wisdom of a poet: What is death? What is family? What is the point of beginning, if it must all end?
And yet it never becomes heavy. The film’s emotional power lies in its lightness, metaphysical dilemmas handled with matter-of-fact sincerity. She muses on the futility of language, the hunger for meaning, while learning how to walk, to speak, to love. This is a film for the very young, to help answer the oldest questions.
In a world desperate for answers, this film proposes a different response: tenderness. The kind found in baby giggles, in sunlit ponds, in small friendships. The kind we often forget as we grow older and harder. Through Amélie’s transformation into a vulnerable girl, we are reminded that our fragility is not our flaw—it is our grace. Her journey is not tragic; it is sacred. She reminds us that life is the miracle, and that perhaps, being human is the only transcendence we need.
