Chameleons depend on camouflage for their survival and adaptability; if the human characters in Québécois animator Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s Death Does Not Exist also need to turn light green or a gentle gold at a certain moment, the director permits it. In spite of the backdrops’ shifting foliage and his draughtsmanship’s twisting clarity of line, it would be wrong to call this compact feature – premiering in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight today – “trippy”; instead, it’s oneiric and soulful, with a particular Gallic fatalism owing to the sorrows and yearnings of its young would-be revolutionaries, who are like soixante-huitards for the age of climate pessimism.

The slender and vague plot is justified by how it liberates Dufour-Laperrière’s animation craft. A band of young people in their early twenties, led by the angular fringe-sporting Manon (the voice of Karelle Tremblay), cautiously pass through a witchy forest as a vast, palatial estate looms ahead. She gives a final speech to her comrades, paying particular attention to the more timid Hélène (Zeneb Blanchet) and conveying that they have no choice for the good of humanity but to teach these “rich geezers” a lesson. After more peaceable direct-action methods have failed, they ambitiously wish to salvage the world from environmental collapse and restore ethical standards.

Surreally armed with double-barrelled rifles (better associated with hunting birds, of which more in a moment), they alight on the opulent property, where a gunfight ensues; revolutionaries, targets and their security guards alike spew caramel-coloured blood when shot. Hélène stares uneasily at a wheelchair-bound old lady with piercing green eyes (Barbara Ulrich) and abruptly deserts, evading a decisive act that would apparently complete their mission.

Death Does Not Exist feels like a woozy dream generated by the past decade’s anxieties, with Manon’s cell evoking radical environmental protesters such as the UK-based Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. Dufour-Laperrière’s hypnotic command of tone and confidence to withhold pure visual storytelling – at times, letting his characters talk in a single, atmospheric location as if it were a minimalist live-action film – makes their crusade appear glamorous and principled. When we’re young, we all want to join a club, gang or similar, and feel included; here, such a “gang” feels especially militant, desiring to take revenge on their elders who’ve ruined their lives and the lives of those to come.

With all of these ambiguous referents, the director creates a speculative, if coherent, world where the direct outcome of their mission is eventually seen: an earthquake of literal earth overtaking urban areas in a fierce process of rewilding, and downed birds and human corpses reanimating in reverse motion. As ever, indie animation like this becomes a vehicle where Hollywood-level spectacle can be devised on the cheap: akin to Gints Zilbalodis in last year’s great Flow [+lire aussi :
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interview : Gints Zilbalodis
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fiche film], Dufour-Laperrière’s craftsmanship feels like a magic trick, where scepticism about less-developed characters and details falls away because of his imagery’s vastness and tangibility.

Death Does Not Exist is a production of Canada and France, staged by Embuscade Films and Miyu Productions. Its world sales are handled by Best Friend Forever.