‘Where is Anne Frank’: A Dark-less History Lesson For Kids [Cannes]

Kitty, the imaginary teen friend addressed in Anne Frank’s diaries, ends up being the main character in Ari Folman’s “Where Is Anne Frank?”.

The son of Auschwitz survivors, Folman seems more interested here in making a film that could be shown as a history lesson for kids rather than any sort of hard-edged depiction of the horrors that occurred during WWII. A noble attempt from the director of the much-more-adult “Waltz With Bashir,” but a botched one at that.

The animation, as with all Folman films, is stunning, placing 2D characters against stop-motion backgrounds. Amsterdam, where the film is mostly set, depicted in rainy and gray colours throughout. That’s where most of the action takes place, in and around the Anne Frank House, as the redheaded Kitty awakens magically out of her creator’s famous diary looking for her creator. She has no idea that Anne was exterminated in a concentration camp by the Nazis more than 75 years ago.

And so, much to her confusion, Kitty doesn’t understand why tourists are visiting Anne’s bedroom, which is now home to a world famous museum. In an attempt to find her creator, she steals the diary and goes out in modern-day Amsterdam looking for Anne. Along the way she encounters Peter (Ralph Prosser), a young street-hustling pickpocketer, and a character that really brings nothing to the story. There’s also a subplot involving a Malian family seeking refugee status that, for a lack of a better word, feels forced and uninvolving.

As a way to tell Anne’s tale, every time Kitty reads the diary, the viewer is transported back to 1942, where the Franks and the van Pels hide from the Nazis. On the streets, the SS starts marching, here they are depicted as figures masked with villainous death masks. Musical contributions from Karen O and Ben Goldwasser accompany some of these scenes, but seem out of place with the overall tone of the film.

Folman’s adaptation of his own graphic novel (Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation) ends up being a cutesie depiction of a very dark story. A nice history lesson to show your kids, but it all plays out a little too childish for my own tastes. This feels like a missed opportunity of sorts as Frank’s story should absolutely be told, but seeing it through the child-like eyes of her imaginary friend Kitty was a misguided creative decision. [C]