Animated filmmaker Sylvian Chomet follows up the great Triplets of Belleville with the Jacques Tati scripted The Ilusionist. The trailer to which seems to suggest at the rather sad comedic life of an ailing magician in the face of more modern day entertainments. To watch the trailer for the upcoming animated film, previously covered here, hit the jump.

One of the great bitter joys in a filmgoer’s life is seeing an unproduced film or screenplay by a deceased auteur finally completed by someone else entirely. On the one hand - it’s great to see their unfinished work in fruition, but on the other - one can’t help but wish it had been the late auteur them self doing the completing. The most recent examples of such a dilemma being Steven Spielberg’s A.I. (based on Stanley Kubrick’s work) or Tom Twyker’s Heaven (part of the great Krysztof Kieslowski’s incomplete Heaven, Hell and Purgatory trilogy). So my feelings towards Jacques Tati’s un-filmed screenplay The Illusionist finally getting made are understandably mixed. It helps, of course, that the director behind The Illusionist is Sylvain Chomet, whose previous film The Triplets of Belleville is easily one of my favorite animated films of the 2000’s. Also easing my mind is that the lead character of The Illusionist seems to have been drawn to replicate the great Tati himself. But despite all these attributes, I still can’t help but wish for the impossible - that it had been Tati helming the film. Oh well… I’ll guess I’ll just have to settle on re-watching one of the comedic master’s earlier films: Playtime or Mon Oncle or Jour de Fete or Mr. Hulot’s Holliday. Or maybe I’ll just watch this trailer on a loop and think of what could have been…

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