The King and the Mockingbird

Opening Friday: Imagination has launched a thousand cartoons, but none like this 1952 fantasy, France's first animated feature (⋆⋆⋆½, unrated, in subtitled French). A modernist adaptation of a Hans Christian Andersen tale that is filled with wild imagery and barbed humor, it's closer to whimsical dada satire and post-WWII political protest than Disney's often weak sauce. Like a surreal children's version of "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay," it features young lovers abused by the ruler of their land, Takicardia. (Yes, like the heart disease.) Obnoxious King Charles hates every citizen and is despised in return. Then his dream about the lovely shepherdess and cute chimney sweep in his boudoir paintings moves the pair into the three-dimensional world, where he tries to eliminate the boy and marry the beauty. His militia consists of bat-winged flying constables and a 10-story iron automaton. Defending the young pair are the witty Mockingbird and a troupe of lions who would rather consume music than humans. The metaphysical images could be a partnership of René Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico. The Stravinsky-flavored melodies by renowned Polish composer Wojciech Kilar demonstrate why he was enlisted by leading directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Roman Polanski and Jane Campion. While it's imperfectly paced and inconsistently drawn, the film by animator Paul Grimaulet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert ("Children of Paradise") is an unforgettable story of love, loss and life's absurdities. (1 & 5 p.m. Fri.-Sun. and Wed.-Thu.; 1 & 7:15 p.m. Mon.-Tue., St. Anthony Main, 125 SE. Main St., Mpls. $5-$8.50.)

Colin Covert