Children's Classics: Kirikou and the Sorceress (Kirikou et la Sorciére)

Kirikou and the Sorceress has a lot of boobs in it for an animated kid's movie. It's heaving with them. Wibbly, wobbly, nipply, child-corrupting chest weapons. Or so those puritanical Americans, who avoided the film like the plague upon its release, would have you believe. You see, Kirikou and the Sorceress is set in a tribal African village, meaning those controversial titties are of the non-erotic National Geographic variety. Indeed, I'd rather expose my (hypothetical) child to an entire village of these than allow them a solitary glimpse at the bulbous cranium of one of those plastic Lolitas, the Bratz.


I found out about this wonderful movie while reading an interview with one of Studio Ghibli's resident geniuses Isao Takahata, director of Pom Poko and Grave of the Fireflies. Takahata spoke of his admiration for both the film and other works by its French/African director Michel Ocelot (who also incidentally created Bjork's Earth Intruders video).

Kirikou and the Sorceress (loosely based on an African folk tale) tells the story of a courageous and mouthy little dude called Kirikou who - in an instant indication of the films folkloric strangeness - speaks from his pregnant mother's tummy. He decides to give birth to himself when she tells him that any child who can talk from the womb can surely manage his own delivery. So out he crawls, and...yikes but he is tiny! Like five inches tall tiny. Yet we soon find out that the diminutive Kirikou is very resourceful and gifted with great speed; the scenes where he rattles around the place like a tiny jet-propelled toy are comical. He's also bull-headed and full of himself like scrappy doo, but endearing rather than annoying. After the nonchalant self-birth, he immediately begins asking his mother questions about things. Where is his father? Eaten by an evil sorceress, she tells him. And his uncles? The same. Of course, Kirikou will have none of this, and moments after birth he's away off to teach the evil sorceress a thing or two.

From here, Kirikou sets about a series of tasks in which he uses his ingenuity to outwit the sorceress and her fetishes (evil wooden helpers who move around in an alarmingly creepy way). He fights magical trees, a swollen water monster and eventually climbs a mountain to meet his grandad and receive the wisdom that will ultimately help him save the village.

Reading the synopsis above you've probably already clocked that this is not the Lion King's Africa - Simba, for all his charms, is about as African as peanut butter and jelly. The Africa presented in Kirikou and the Sorceress is a rather stranger place, laced with the magical logic of folklore and sometimes quite scary.

The art in the movie is ultra stylised. The fluidly animated characters are rendered to look elegantly monochromatic, allowing them to stand out against backgrounds of bejeweled intensity. The areas around the village are geometrical and are infused with a timeless, eerie stillness that reminds me at once of both those empty plazas painted by the surrealist De Chiricio and of ancient Egyptian sculpture.


It is the jungle art that properly wows ya though. Taking the fantastic imaginings of the primitive French post-impressionist Rousseau (illustrated above) as his starting point, Ocelot paints an emerald wonderland for little Kirikou to adventure through.

I could go on, but I won't - except to say that there is a smashing soundtrack by Youssou N'Dour and the film is available in its entirety on youtube starting here. Chesticles included, this is a stunning children's film.