Review: A Boat in the Garden smoothly sails on the seas of memory

François, our narrator in A Boat in the Garden (or Slocum et Moi in the original French), tells us as the film begins that he's going to recount a story about his father, and he'll draw it as he remembers. This feels like it sets the stage for the film to come in two important ways. First, he can only tell the events as he remembers them, through his eyes. It also feels like a way to chart his course through these memories, jumping around as they occur to him, come back, sometimes giving the narrative a sort of stream-of-consciousness flow to it.

It's an appropriate way for the film to move, as it's so much about boats, the sea, rivers. Of course, it's about much more than that, but there is a sense of that gentle rocking motion to much of these proceedings, a kindness to how François tells the story of a man who isn't always kind. We're seeing the dusty shelves of the past through the hazy light of memory, and that light is quite generous in how it makes the dust sparkle and shine.

At only 75 minutes long, the Lumière nominee for Best Animated Feature is something of a simple film, lightweight not in its ambition, but in its scope. This is, at its core, a portrait of a family over a few formative years, maybe the earliest years François will ever be able to recall. In that way, it's like we're excavating the bedrock of who he is as a person, as a son, and as an artist. We meet him as an art student living with his aunt in Paris, recalling the years in post-war France in which his father (actually his stepfather, but the only father figure he's ever known) undertakes an unusual project: building a replica of Joshua Slocum's boat in which he became the first person to single-handedly sail around the globe.

We follow François as he navigates those tricky memories, in which he starts to form a fuller picture of himself, as well as his father, Pierre. He describes the family as containing two teams: one comprised of his parents, the other himself and his mother. There is no third team. And yet, as we watch, that third team starts to form, a little shakily perhaps, but it's there. Or it will be. François is apprehensive as he starts to become part of the boat-building project, trying to be a real man, whatever that means. Being able to recognize a tool, or help lift something heavy, pick out good pieces of timber. His father is so handy, and yet we know our young hero has an artistic future ahead of him. Ships passing in the night, maybe, or maybe they'll sail alongside each other for a while.

Throughout the film, we also see scenes of Slocum's historic journey, which gives a sense of danger to the proceedings. The whole movie, you kind of wonder what the endgame is. Will Pierre eventually take this boat out on the water? Will it even be able to float? Where will he go, and what will he see? We're made acutely aware of all the dangers that are inherent in sailing: inclement weather, unpredictable waves, fire, pirates, sea monsters. (Okay, maybe some dangers are more relevant than others.) 

By the film's end, you start to wonder if Pierre isn't even interested in being someone who built a boat, but rather wants to always live as someone who's building a boat. For anyone with a creative drive, this might hit a little too close to home: how scary it is to finish something, to declare it done, for a fact to be a fact rather than a possibility. Sometimes, it's so much more comfortable to live in the ambiguity, the space before the thing is done and you have to move on, figure out what's next, if anything.

One of the more minor chords here is also one that struck me the most: a picture of what it looks like to spend a life with a person you love. François's parents are so in love, such a great team, so supportive of each other. One adventure will give way to the next, and they know they'll always face whatever's coming together. It makes me think of that thing that happens as you grow up, when you start to see your parents as people, human beings with their own thoughts and desires and dreams. And the way that feels like a loss of innocence, but also the gaining of something more important, more real.

I would be remiss not to mention how wonderful this film's presentation is. The animation really evokes the process of memory, so tactile and dreamy, even. It looks like François grabbed his colored pencils and watercolors and went to work breathing life into his childhood years, a very sweet aesthetic with enough thorny details to not feel too detached from reality.

And the score is just lovely, and very French-sounding, with its rollicking woodwinds and jaunty strings. 

It tackling such a small (in many ways) story, A Boat in the Garden manages to navigate quite a bit of territory, ably sailing down the river of memory to illuminate truths that might sometimes be uncomfortable to look at, but that ultimately might feel like a safe (even cozy) space to drop anchor.