Picture of the film LE PETIT NICOLAS - QU'EST-CE QU'ON ATTEND POUR ÊTRE HEUREUX ? (LITTLE NICHOLAS - HAPPY AS CAN BE) by Amandine FREDON and Benjamin MASSOUBRE © 2022 - Onyx Films - Bidibul Productions
Little Nicholas – Happy as Can Be: from nostalgia to tribute film
Barely a year after the latest adaptation of the children's book written and illustrated by René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé, Little Nicolas returns to the big screen at Cannes in Special Screenings. Directors Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre offer up an out-of-the-ordinary animated film which runs halfway between the child humor of the books and exploring the character's origin and his creators.
Towards the end of the1950s in Paris, René Goscinny (voiced by Alain Chabat) and Jean-Jacques Sempé (voiced by Laurent Lafitte) invented the character Nicholas, a small boy and prankster with a smile on his face whose days are punctuated by games with his band of friends, fights, joking around, and learning. When the fictional character is invited into the workshop of his “dads,” the roles are reversed, and it's the creators who recount their childhoods, their careers, and their friendship to Little Nicholas.
Little Nicholas – Happy as can be deals more with the legends of drawing and comic strips, Jean-Jacques Sempé and René Goscinny, than the character of Nicolas. A veritable incursion into the minds of the creators, made even more immersive by the artistic choices of the animation, the film sparkles with originality.
Born in the columns of the Sud-Ouest newspaper in 1959, it would take 63 years for Little Nicholas to walk up the red carpet at the Palais des festivals in Cannes, without losing any of his mischief. It's perhaps the opportunity to remember Sempé's adage, “I came to be, at times, reasonable, but never adult.”
