Think back to when you were 12, and the sensation of re-opening your favourite book. (This is The Spectator; I’m assuming you were all bookish 12-year-olds.) The Silver Chair, perhaps, or The Phoenix and the Carpet — some fantastic alternative world, anyway, filled with characters who felt like old friends. The lumbering iron giants, powered by fire and water. The scary-funny vegetable-monster. The terrifying but magnificent queen, and her eerie batsqueak of sexual-ity. And of course, the bit where pillows turn magically into birds and flit about the room.
This new project from the designer/director team Barbe & Doucet initially feels like being pulled into one of those beloved classics. We’re in a grand hotel circa 1900, and it looks fabulous. Black-and-white illustrations — Gustave Doré meets Peter Firmin — are blown up to colossal size, and conjured into life. Characters emerge from two-dimensional backdrops, fireworks flash, and immersive sound effects make cellars drip with glistening damp.
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