CinemoiFrenchFilm's video: BFI London Film Festival 2011 - The Fairy

At once poised and headily anarchic, the visual absurdism of Abel, Gordon and Romy is one of the most distinctive comic styles in today's cinema. Following Iceberg and Rumba, their new feature takes their laid-back eccentricity into the realms of the magical. Dom (Abel) is receptionist in a small seaside hotel. One night, a woman named Fiona (Gordon) checks in, announces that she's a fairy, and grants Dom three wishes - of which he promptly chooses the first two. Romance soon blossoms between a pair clearly made for each other - partners in a series of elaborately crafted, audaciously executed sight gags that showcase the duo's Keatonesque acrobatic prowess and gawky grace. A sort of cartoon fantasia, except with human actors, The Fairy is an idiosyncratic flight of fancy - an oddly fastidious blend of slapstick, circus, dance and trompe l'oeil illusionism. Among the highlights: an underwater ballet with plastic-bag jellyfish, and a hair-raising race to save a baby in peril. Utterly sophisticated yet somehow winningly innocent, The Fairy sees Abel, Gordon and co-director Romy (who plays a myopic café owner) casting a spell that's entirely their own.