‘Iron Boy’ Review: A Moving Coming-of-Age Cartoon

Growing up on a struggling farm in the middle of rural France is no easy task. But imagine growing up there with an Edward Scissorhands-style back brace strapped to your body at all times, making you walk around town like a pre-teen metal monster.

Such is the sad fate of 11-year-old Christophe, the disjointed young hero of animator Louis Clichy’s moving feature debut, Iron Boy (Le Corset), which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar and was just picked up by Sony Pictures Classics.

What makes this hand-drawn coming-of-ager stand out from other entries to the genre is Clichy’s attention to detail, especially the way he portays rugged country living in the 1980s, at a time when French agriculture was consolidating and family farms faced extinction. The director, who previously worked on Pixar hits Wall-E and Up, contrasts hard-knocks rustic realism with poetic flights of fancy whenever Christophe manages to escape his world and find his own voice, adding lyricism to an otherwise harsh existence.

Life already seems tough enough for the boy, who lives with his dad (Dimitri Colas), mom (Aurélie Vassort) and rather brutish older brother (Rod Paradot) on a farm that can no longer make ends meet from day to day. It suddenly gets much tougher when Christophe begins to lose his balance, leading to a slew of medical examinations that determine he needs to wear a brace to correct some kind of spinal condition.

Iron Boy is thus born, and he’s definitely not happy about it. Forced to walk around, and even sleep, in a steel straightjacket with his neck permanently raised high, the once carefree Christophe begins to shut down to both his classmates and family. It all seems lost for a while until he crosses paths with Michel (Alexandre Astier), a pipe organ player at his local church who decides to take the boy on as a page-turner, eventually teaching him how to play himself.

The film’s best scenes feature Christophe emerging from his metal shell and into the loftier realms of classical music — in this case the heart-rending melodies of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem (also memorably used by Terence Malick to score The Thin Red Line), which he listens to on a Walkman while riding his bike between home and church. Framing Christophe’s stiff little body against the surrounding green fields or the buildings of his drab provincial enclave, Clichy powerfully captures those eureka moments you have as a kid when your world is suddenly opened up by beauty, and you realize you’re not alone.

Christophe’s life also changes when he meets Clara (Brune Moulin), a rebel girl in his mandatory swimming class who eventually takes a liking to him. As two small-town outlaws, they form a bond that involves, among other things, shoplifting from local businesses and using Christophe’s back brace as a cover whenever the metal detector goes off. Like Michel, Clara pushes her friend to see beyond the limited horizons of his existence, helping him survive a difficult year that he literally spends in bondage.

Despite Christophe’s many efforts to escape his origins, Clichy never portrays his home front as a horrible place, but rather as a loving household torn apart by financial worry and alcoholism. Their younger son’s back issues are indeed the least of the family’s problems, especially when a deal made with a more enterprising neighboring farmer winds up going bust.

This leads to a finale that can strain credulity somewhat, although it brings a level of emotion that feels earned rather than fabricated. Carrying on a very French (and also Belgian and Swiss) tradition of arthouse animation films — Persopolis, My Life as a Courgette, I Lost My Body, etc. — that blend realism and fantasy, autobiography and imagination, Iron Boy offers an honest and graceful depiction of growing up in a working-class household, where nothing is ever handed to you except the will to be free.