Adam is a 15-year-old teenager with a physique that is not only unattractive, but also polymorphic: he transforms according to insults. And there is no shortage of them, even flying rather low, in this completely crazy animated film, where we don’t really know whether to laugh or cry.
To see the warm welcome given to Adam Changes Slowly, the first feature film by Joël Vaudreuil, in theaters this Friday, we have to believe that this ambiguity is seductive. Winner of the Grand Prize at the Niigata International Animated Film Festival, Japan, earlier this year, the feature film also won the Grand Prize at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in September 2023. World premiering at Annecy (2023), its theatrical landing in France last week (one week before Quebec) aroused both enthusiasm and curiosity.
“A bold animated film about the cruelty of adolescence,” headlined Télérama, “an insolent poetic fable about identity,” commented Les Échos, a “true and beautiful curiosity,” summed up Baz’art. Even Libération found this “whiplash” ultimately “endearing.”
The main interested party is the “first surprised”. “This is my first feature film. I had no expectations”, reacted Joël Vaudreuil, who we know as bassist of the group Avec pas d’casque (with whom he is going on tour at the end of the summer), met a few days ago .
His Adam, with his ungainly and angular physique, with his bent back, his swinging arms (and breasts!), his pot-bellied profile, not to mention his budding little moustache, is a real antihero cliché. He obviously attracts mockery, and not just from the popular clique at his high school. His own grandmother called him a “long trunk” throughout his childhood, in addition to finding him “slow”, “fat”, and if you want insults, here you go. A gravelly voice for the occasion included, here by Isabelle Brouillette. Moreover, in terms of voice, Joël Vaudreuil (who obviously signs the soundtrack, a bit distressing, a nod “to old horror films like John Carpenter”) is treated here to Simon Lacroix, Fabien Cloutier, Marc Beaupré, Sophie Cadieux, etc.
But be careful, this is not a film about bullying.
In a word, he says, his “spectator’s fantasy.” While animated films usually flirt with either poetry or trash, Adam Changes Slowly is more of a slow film, with a Beavis and Butt-Head aesthetic, which plays on unease, halfway through. between (offbeat) comedy and (crazy) drama. We don’t know which foot to dance on, and that’s intentional. “It’s written so that part of the scenario comes from the state of the viewer. Depending on the state you are in, you will laugh or be sad, explains the director. And I, as a spectator, like this line. »
The ambivalence also persists throughout the film, since here, in fact, everything surprises: the nasty grandmother, as we have said, but also this legless cat that Adam (Simon Lacroix) must take care of, that shirtless neighbor whose house he mows the lawn all summer, and what about the simple-minded uncle who shows up at his house?
By respecting several codes of adolescent comedy, Adam changes slowly, obviously taking into account his nicely drunk party scene, and plenty of blunders. But the humor here comes less from the lines than from the absurdity of all these situations (and we haven’t told you about the poop bags in the trees). As for the finale, without giving anything away, let’s say that it plays again and again on this famous line of ambiguity.
Note that the whole thing is set somewhere in the 1990s, as evidenced by the video cassettes, landline telephones and other dirty magazines hidden under the bed. Slightly autobiographical, Adam? “The basis of the scenario is the emotions that the character feels,” answers Joël Vaudreuil. I drew a lot from the discomforts I had as a teenager. » Discomforts, again, quite “universal”: misplaced guilt, mourning a bad person you didn’t love (we’ll let you guess who), etc.
The “polymorphic” side of his character, for its part, obviously invented, comes from Joël Vaudreuil’s interest in the “supernatural”, exploited in his previous short films, notably La vie Magnificent sous l’eau (2015). “I seem to be interested in the supernatural all the time,” he says. And then it’s interesting that this aspect is linked to the spectator’s interpretations. » Again, ambiguity is required: is it real, associated with Adam’s feelings, or with the perception of the spectators? Up to you !
Joël Vaudreuil had fun and it shows. “I wanted a film where the main character is more of an observer than an actor,” he continues. These script challenges are writing pleasures. » And thanks to its small production team (Olivier Picard and David Pierrat of Parce Que Films), the final result is indeed close to its initial idea. “The fewer people there are, the fewer concessions you make! The proposal is close to the basic idea,” he says. That is to say a statement, and a tone, on the famous “line”: “funny, but not stupid”.