One of the many enduring pleasures of “Ernest & Celestine,” the 2014 French film about the unlikely bond between a bear and a mouse, is its rhapsodic bridging of music and imagery. The story (based on Gabrielle Vincent’s books) is rendered with gossamer line drawings attached to their accompanying score with the images sometimes steaming, bubbling and curling in time with the musical notes.
“Ernest and Celestine: A Journey to Gibberitia” is the gem of a sequel to that Oscar-nominated film, centering the story this time on music as the sine qua non of community. The mischievous little mouse Celestine (voiced by Pauline Brunner) and the gruff troubadour Ernest (Lambert Wilson) travel to Ernest’s hometown, Gibberitia, a majestic but autocratic city in the mountains where it is no longer legal the music. Even birds are not exempt; tuneful warbler was shooed and hosed down by the police.
While the previous film leaned toward Celestine, “A Trip to Gibberitia,” directed by Julien Chheng and Jean-Christophe Roger, follows Ernest, a prodigal son who soon learns that his father, a state judge, instituted the ban despite the other.
The lively, lively plot has shades of the French Revolutionary spirit — a band of rebel musicians calling their underground movement “the resistance” — but the real magic of the film is in the illustrations. The backdrops are full of painterly detail, and the small changes in the characters’ faces convey worlds of feeling. In a film whose moral emphasizes the need for artistic freedom, there is a deceptive simplicity to this aesthetic style that makes it all the more special.
Ernest and Celestine: A Journey through Gibberitia
Not rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters.