Mercano the Martian - cartoon film

Realizer, scenario, production: Juan Antin
Duration: 1. 15
Go back to exit in France: May 5
Distribution: ASC Distribution

Synopsis: The Mercano Martian leaves on the Earth to avenge death for his dog crushed by the Vogager probe. But it is found wedged in Argentina

As the Argentinian daily newspaper Página 12 notices it, "this image of the wandering Martian is a kind of premonition of what was going to become the country: it was thought and drawn one year before the arrival despairing and spontaneous of the cartoneros [ which, since the ace of December 2001, excavate the dustbins in the search of paperboards ] in the center of Buenos Aires ".
The project continued at the height crisis with the voluntary assistance of the students of the faculty of cinema, in which the young realizer Juan Antin teaches.
The film, carried out with a reduced team and only 250.000 dollars, thus made say to the Argentinian press that Mercano "is a project as delirious as is Argentinian reality". And, in a certain manner, the destiny of Mercano reflects also that of its creator. If the case of the first seems one despaired moment, its adventures are completed on a happy end waited. The creation of Mercano makes it possible to the young 34 years Argentinian realizer to penetrate in the rather reduced circle of the independent animated drawing.

Like South Park, of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, which started on Comedy Central before becoming a feature film, Mercano was initially diffused in the form of "commas" two minutes on the chain of Argentinian television Much Music TV (like in the subway stations). Same manner, Simpson, of Matt Groening, on Fox, owed one moment to leave on large screen. Like what, the cathode ray tube has sometimes good. The parallel does not stop there, since Juan Antin is inspired largely by its North-American counterparts, in the form which it chooses and in the public that it aims. (It is necessary to add with the list of the references of Anton the Mutants of space, of Bill Plympton.) Like them, it combines simple drawing, black and critical humour social, in an antithesis asserted of what Disney or its imitateurs can do.

More still, perhaps, than its models, Juan Antin posts a will of construction. "Our history is placed in the movement antiglobalisation", affirms it clearly. The realizer criticizes the consumer society, the invasion of virtual and asserts an aspect trash. "In Pokémon, it is violence for violence; in Dragonball too. For us, violence has a direction criticizes and represents a form of parody of our everyday life."

All that probably explains that the feature film became, in Argentina, an object of worship for some. (Just like one still exchanges the cassettes of extraordinary Vampiros in Habana, carried out in Cuba by Juan Padron in 1985: a delirious history of gangster fights around clubs of holidays for vampires and plot to reverse a General...)

For as much, Mercano does not reach the size of its elder. It is not given to everyone to be "stupid and malicious"! The honest Martian repeats himself rather quickly, his voice Soupe way with cabbages types on the nerves, the long-winded speech antimondialist is too often hopelessly simplistic. If the film can like the unconditional ones, it leaves a bitter taste of not held promise. As with us Página 12 regrets it, Mercano, "it is more one good idea that a good film".

Fair Olivier of the International Mail