Living Large

 

Title: Living Large

Directed by: Kristina Dufková

Length: 80 min.

Country: Czech Republic

Year: 2024

Premiere: Annecy Film Festival 2024

Synopsis: pre-teen Benjamin has the dream of putting together a band, while simultaneaously struggles with his weight problems.

RATING: 2.5/5

REVIEW

Living Large is yet again an animation film that is sourced from an illustration book: Mikaël Ollivier's 'La vie en gros', about a pre-teen struggling with his own size and eating habits, while simultaneously growing up.

It does feel fresh to see a pre-teen coming-of-age story rather than one focusing on the passage to adulthood, as most such narratives in film do, and even more so that it's an animation film, of the most complicated kind: stop-motion puppet animation. A commendable effort that does bring to the screen some elaborate visual solutions and astonishing scenes, from a technical standpoint.

Making a film that speaks to a pre-teen audience is certainly isn't easy, as this is the age when children start to become indipendent and to not take adults as seriously. And that is a struggle that can be felt in Living Large: it sometimes feels that it is trying to connect to this very specific age group, but it also feels evidently that it's adults trying really hard to do so: the rap musical interventions, much of the comedy, the storyline's didactic outcomes are few examples, but even the design choice.  A concept that appears realted to Mikaël Ollivier's illustrational style and that has aesthetically "ugly" body shapes and character designs, in a seeming belief that pre-teens like this better, or in an effort to represent the pre-teen age in its less pleasant aspects.

The didactic aspect of the film has a clear goal of tackling an important issue, of course: that of eating disorders at this age. In this sense, that Living Large is an animation film appears almost as the most ethically sound choice: since it is not live action, no child will have to enact personally such a potentially harmful situation on screen. The slightly charicatural and cartoonish appearance of characters of Living Large will never have the audiences associate a real person to the on-screen characters either. The story is obviously a bit oversimplifying some difficulties, but it does provide a healthy form of body positivism, as in it plaudes the effort of being healthy despite the shape. 

Living Large has certainly noble educational aims and at least tries to appeal to a pre-teen audience, but it really requires the audience to buy its riff, accept the artistic choices. And if there's no collaboration on that side, the viewing experience might appear a bit disappointing.