This Oscar-nominated animated Gallic crime caper is visually striking but too insignificant for the big screen. It looks lovely, its sleazy atmosphere is agreeably stark and its angular characters are imaginatively rendered to evoke the spirit of Picasso – but its story, about a cat with a double life, is silk thin. Worst of all, the English voices which replace the French originals are torturously ill-matched.
By day, Dino the cat snuggles up in the arms of little Zoé, a mute child distraught at her father’s murder. But by night this slinky feline is hanging out on Parisian rooftops with Nico, a graceful jewel thief. Events contrive to bring Zoé and Nico together when a wanted mobster plans the theft of a museum antiquity. With so much criminality on show – theft, kidnapping and guns – it’s difficult to imagine the audience for this pretty but hollow film.