Directors: Arturo Ambriz, Roy Ambriz
Writers: Arturo Ambriz, Roy Ambriz
Stars: Mireya Mendoza, Arturo Mercado Jr, Luis Leonardo Suárez
Synopsis: Frankelda, a determined 19th-century Mexican writer, journeys into her subconscious to face the monsters she’s written about. Guided by a tormented prince, she must restore the balance between fiction and reality before it’s too late.
Mexico is having a watershed moment with the release of I Am Frankelda, the country’s first-ever stop-motion animated feature, acting as a prequel to the series Frankelda’s Book of Spooks (which is sadly unavailable to view in this critic’s neck of the woods). After a buzzing festival run, which included the Fantasia International Film Festival last July, the Ambriz brothers had their animated film acquired by Netflix, a significant get not only for Fantasia’s validity as a major film festival, but for the brothers, who have been trying to bring Mexico’s first stop-motion work to life for a very long time.
People who haven’t (or can’t, due to HBO Max not being available in this critic’s country) seen the series won’t be lost, as this tracks the origins of Frankelda’s (Mireya Mendoza) relationship with Prince Herneval (Arturo Mercado Jr.). Before she became Frankelda, she was known as Francisca Imelda, an aspiring horror author who caught the eye of Prince Herneval, as her fictional writings on an imaginary realm called the Torpus Terrentus actually exist.
Inside this realm, inhabitants create nightmares that are translated within the human subconscious to survive. At the time when Francisca writes about it, Herneval does not know that humans live beyond this world or the mechanics of the Torpus Terrentus. However, upon discovering that humans are real through Francisca, he begins to fall for her, despite their parents’ warnings from ever traveling to the human world.
As humans become less fearful, Torpus Terrentus begins to crumble, and their nightmare-teller, Procustes (Luis Leonardo Suárez), is unable to write stories that inflict lasting trauma. In the real world, Francisca has been trying, to no avail, to get her writings published, and it’s there that she meets Herneval, who, after reading her stories, convinces her to start anew in Torpus Terrentus and save their realm. This is how she becomes the pseudonym “Frankelda” and embarks on a journey beyond her wildest imagination.
The experience of viewing I Am Frankelda is exactly that: beyond our wildest imagination. The film abounds with impeccable artistry from top to bottom, so much so that you can’t even believe half the stuff the Ambriz brothers have pulled off, even when they pull back the curtain and reveal how several key setpieces were made during the film’s end credits. There is an illusion of heightened fantasy that many animated movies know how to express, but even when the trickery is laid bare, your mouth is still agape, going “oh my god??”
There are several sequences in I Am Frankelda that are unlike anything the medium has ever put out, even deftly blending live-action fragments to the point where you have no idea what was fully “animated” or captured in-camera. The use of hand-drawn animation, especially in a key setpiece, opens the film’s aesthetic to surprisingly moving textures and pushes a medium that has sadly been relegated to “kids cinema” in popular culture away from this notion. Animation is one of the most powerful modes of artistic expression there is, and the sheer magnitude of I Am Frankelda’s ambition shows exactly that.
It’s a shame, then, that the movie’s predictable and unimpressive story severely bogs down what’s in front of our eyes. What I Am Frankelda tracks is essentially a by-the-numbers journey for the characters to reach the places they are in the television show, with no real ingenuity to freshen its tired structure. The movie attempts to blend a fantastical, almost gothic horror story with musical numbers worthy of Henry Selick’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, yet none of the songs have a lasting impact and severely undermine the characters’ emotional progression.
The narrative trajectories for both Francisca/Frankelda and Herneval are so familiar that one immediately knows where they will be by the time the film ends, even for those who haven’t seen the show. There’s nothing original or inventive in the emotional progression of both characters, and the multiple dramatic turns the story takes to create tension between them fall painfully flat. The same can be said for its villain, Procustes, whose presence immediately signals him as a “BAD GUY.” He sadly can’t overcome the clichés associated with his character.
Still, the voice cast provide impassioned enough performances that we’re keen to overlook I Am Frankelda’s perceived flaws, especially when the animation is so emotive and jaw-droppingly gorgeous. I wish I would have been able to experience such artistry on the big screen at Fantasia last year, but personal events prevented me from attending the festival in-person as much as I would’ve. That said, the fact that Netflix is backing up such a leap forward in animation promises that great things are to come for the Ambriz brothers, and for Mexico’s animated scene as a whole, which will definitely please one of I Am Frankelda’s biggest supporters and champions of the medium, Guillermo del Toro. Yes, it’s flawed, but also, if it allows Mexico to create more imaginative, human-driven works like this, who are we to nitpick?
