Blaise is an oddly hilarious, unique animated cringe comedy of awkwardness and misunderstandings leading to increasingly absurd situations. The film y Jean-Paul Guigue and Dimitri Planchon is presented as part of the Fantasia Film Festival, 2026 edition.
The first thing anyone will note about Blaise, written by Clemence Labatteaux & Dimitri Planchon (based on his own graphic novel) and directed by Jean-Paul Guigue & Dimitri Planchon, will be the unique animation style. I don’t think I’ve seen this sort before, and it’s striking. There’s an uncanny valley in a strange sort of rotoscoping. Real people, it seems, edited and drawn over in a montage, Dave McKean but more cartoon, with overthe top features features, then aspects further exaggerated. It’s like watching a cartoon through the bottom of a glass. Just a few steps off from reality. It’s through the looking glass. It’s wonderfully and specifically designed, with pulling energy just in the odd designs.
The odd animation, supposedly awkward and off-putting, reflects the film. So much of our lives can be found in the uncanny valley of the mind, especially if wanting to keep the veneer of politeness and doing well with society to the detriment of those screaming inside, of wanting to state the internal. Or even to correct someone wrong, torn between letting it slide and going on or making a moment and possibly getting aggravation back. Thus, this unique animation is perfectly suited. The world of Blaise is an odd one, a purposely carnival mirror of our reality, warped and twisted for the needs of the film and to match the internal and external lives of the characters.
How much you’ll take in Blaise depends on your tolerance of awkward, cringe comedy. To watch Blaise to be fully able to move awkwardly through life at the center of the titular character, his mother, and his father. Each and every character, the ones just mentioned along with the such as a rich man (mom’s boss), his daughter (Blaises’ burgeoning girlfriend), mom’s coworkers, dad’s therapist (actually Blaise’s guidance councilor in a running gag of adult men, still children in mnay ways, using her in this way), are all moving through life with unsurity, showing even as adults we often have no clue what the hell we’re doing, and always reaching for a connection to prove we are not useless. The style fits in the exaggerating that Guigie and Planchon bring to the story and people’s actions. Adapted from a comic book, which was previously adapted to TV, Blaise is 80 minutes of one awkward social situation after another, heightened to fully life-altering. It’s cringingly out of control as the situations everyone, especially the family at the center, allow themselves to get into to avoid having a direct, frank conversation; going along for politeness or just avoiding confrontation. It’s absurd where it goes, and it works with hilarious degrees.
There’s fun in how each of the three leads is differently awkward and used. Blaise is often blank-faced and quiet, afraid to make any statement, so he gets the Being There treatment, with the silence noted as agreement. Blaise and his girlfriend, both eager to prove themselves more than being on the outskirts, become involved with revolutionary protests, with their own pauses building the other up into something they don’t really want. Mom, Carole, knows what she needs to say, but always chooses the exact wrong words, leading to misinterpretations. Thus, she’s hated by her coworkers, but becomes involved with one in surprising ways. Dad, Jacque, overshares and talks himself into logical pretzels to gain agreement. But everyone is awkwardly avoiding any direct truths, putting themselves in larger and larger and more and more awkward scenarios to such a humorous degree, one cringes in thinking where it might go in the next step, or what fallout will occur when, of course, it ends at all, suck in their unwanted paths past the points of no return. No closure here, because doing something pat isn’t what Blaise has any intention of doing.
It’s a comedy of long pauses, awkward stares, misconstruction of statements (or not hearing and running away in a different, assumed direction, such as in a too-loud club in a great sequence of hearing/reading-lips in huge swings and misses). It’s the sort of droll in the purposely flat readings of people unsure of their own voices, trying to find the next step in their lives, especially as others move their feet for them.
Blaise, directed by Jean-Paul Guigue & Dimitri Planchon, is a delightful weird slice of awkwardness. Its unique animation builds the atmosphere in a special way, pushing up the characters and their askew world. Blaise is presented as part of the Fantasia Film Festival, running in Montreal July 16th through August 2nd. 2026.