The_Hollywood_Reporter__February_07_2018

The
Breadwinner
1
I
n creating Parvana, an 11-year-old girl
growing up under the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan who disguises herself as a boy so
she can work to support her family, Ireland’s
Cartoon Saloon and director Nora Twomey
wanted to work “from the eyes out, with very
few lines,” says Twomey. “The fewer lines with
a hand-drawn character, the more you can
identify with the character because she’s less
specific and more universal.”
Indeed, in the GKIDS feature The
Breadwinner, Parvana’s eyes reveal much of
her emotion. For instance, when Parvana
goes to the market with her father, it can be a
1 Parvana in disguise.
2 Parvana with her father, Nurullah, voiced by Ali Badshah.
frightening experience for a girl. She stands
out with her long hair and bright scarf, but her
body language shows that she doesn’t want to
be seen — her shoulders are drawn in to take
up a small space, and she keeps
her eyes down. When she returns,
dressed as a boy, she blends in,
and with her body language she
Twomey
takes up more space.
“There’s a warmth and
earthiness to her personality,” says Twomey
of Parvana, who is voiced by Saara Chaudry.
“She has flaws, she has humor — she’s fully
rounded. We wanted a character that was
relatable, even when she does something
incredibly brave.”
2
Coco
T
o examine the life of Dutch
post-impressionist painter
Vincent van Gogh, writer-directors
Hugh Welchman and Dorota
Kobiela developed a story that
follows fictional character Armand
Roulin (Douglas Booth) on a journey
to van Gogh’s final destination,
the quiet village of Auvers-sur-
Oise just outside Paris, where
Roulin hears conflicting stories
about the artist’s life.
Saoirse Ronan (nominated for
a best actress Oscar for Lady
Bird) plays Marguerite Gachet,
the daughter of van Gogh’s
physician and the subject of
his works Marguerite Gachet at
the Piano and Marguerite Gachet
in the Garden. “We wanted her
to look like the paintings,” says
Welchman, though they gave
Marguerite the face
of Ronan, who is
about the same age
(23) as Gachet was.
Welchman
The drama, produced
by Poland’s
BreakThru Films and the U.K.’s
Trademark Films, was made using
a frame-by-frame animation
technique (like stop-motion) with
roughly 65,000 oil paintings on
canvas. The filmmakers started by
shooting the performances of
the actors, including Ronan, on a
greenscreen at 12 fps, edited as
if it were a live-action film and then
broke it up into images that were
painted in van Gogh’s style.
As to Marguerite’s role in the
story, Welchman says: “There
was speculation that something
was going on between [her and
van Gogh]. We used that speculation
as part of the dramatic
development of the story. She’s an
enigma to us.”
I
n Pixar’s Coco, Mama Imelda
is the matriarch of young
Miguel’s family in Mexico. As such,
“she had to be a character that you
could believably see the rest of the
family cowering at her feet,” says
director Lee Unkrich. “We needed
somebody with a real sense of gravitas
so you would buy that she has
such sway over the family.”
She was designed to look similar
to Maria Felix and other formidable
Mexican actresses from the ’30s
and ’40s. “We have the
white shock in her hair.
We wanted her dress to
be corseted so that she
Unkrich
feels tightly wound,”
Unkrich says. “We gave
her big shoulder pads so that she
would be physically formidable and
also have a sense of history.”
The team behind the film,
which is based on the Dia de los
Muertos (Day of the Dead) tradition,
also centered Mama’s look
on a Victorian aesthetic, using the
works of Mexican engraver Jose
Guadalupe Posada, including his
famous La Catrina, which featured a
skeleton woman in period garb.
Alanna Ubach (Girlfriends’ Guide
to Divorce) was cast to voice
Mama. “There’s such a richness to
the sound of Alanna’s voice,” adds
Unkrich. When she was cast, the
director didn’t know the part would
require singing, but, luckily, “it
turns out she’s a great singer.”
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
71
FEBRUARY 7, 2018