--- title: "Ernest & Celestine" year: 2012 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/ernest-and-celestine" fi1m_score: 84 critics_score: 86 critics_reviews: 12 published: "2026-09-17T06:58:58.698302+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T06:59:13.152318+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Ernest & Celestine (2012) Directed by Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Benjamin Renner · 1h 20m · MPA PG · Animation, Family, Crime, Drama, Comedy **Fi1m score: 84** · Critics 86 from 12 reviews *In a sentence:* Bonnie and Clyde with fur, a sketchbook and a bag of stolen teeth, in watercolour > Three directors, Daniel Pennac’s screenplay and Gabrielle Vincent’s children’s books produce a film about a mouse and a bear that is funny, kind and drawn like a wet page. It is slight, and it knows it; that is most of its charm. ## Synopsis Célestine (Pauline Brunner) is an orphan mouse in an underground city of mice, where La Grise (Anne-Marie Loop) tells the children at bedtime that the Big Bad Bear above will eat them. Célestine draws bears and mice as friends and is sent up to collect bear children’s milk teeth for the dental clinic. Above ground, Ernest (Lambert Wilson) is a bear who plays music on a street corner for coins and goes home to an empty larder. When Célestine’s night at the house of sweet-seller Georges (Patrice Melennec) and dentist Lucienne (Brigitte Virtudes) goes wrong, she ends up in a dustbin, where Ernest finds her and considers eating her. She offers him a better meal instead, and then a robbery. ## Review Célestine is a mouse who draws. She lives underground in an orphanage where La Grise (Anne-Marie Loop) tells the young mice each night that the Big Bad Bear upstairs will eat them, and she draws pictures of bears and mice being friends anyway. Ernest is a bear who plays every instrument at once for coins on a street corner and goes home to an empty larder. Daniel Pennac’s screenplay, from Gabrielle Vincent’s children’s books, gets them into the same dustbin and then spends the rest of its 80 minutes asking whether a bear, a mouse and a bag of stolen teeth can make a household. It is one of the kindest animated films we have seen, and it is also a heist picture. We recommend it to anyone, child in tow or not. Three directors share the credit: Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, whose *A Town Called Panic* was made from plastic farm toys and hysteria, and Benjamin Renner. The look is hand-drawn watercolour. Outlines wobble, colour bleeds past them, and backgrounds are left unfinished, so a street of bear shops trails off into white paper at the edge of the frame as though the painter had gone for lunch. It is a brave way to make a feature, because the eye has to accept a picture that is never quite complete. After about five minutes we stopped noticing and started living in it. The production designers, credited only as Zaza and Zyk, build two towns stacked on top of each other. Above, the bears have cobbles, awnings and a sweet shop run by Georges (Patrice Melennec) next door to a dental surgery run by his wife Lucienne (Brigitte Virtudes); he rots the teeth and she fixes them, and Pennac lets a child work out the arrangement without help. Below, the mice have a city of tunnels and a clinic where the head dentist (Dominique Collignon-Maurin) sends apprentices upstairs to collect bear children’s milk teeth from under pillows. Every mouse needs a bear incisor eventually. The world explains itself in a glance and gets on with the story. The story is a crime story. Célestine (Pauline Brunner) botches her collection at the bedside of Georges and Lucienne’s boy Léon (Léonard Louf), ends up in a bin, and is found by a hungry Ernest (Lambert Wilson). She talks him out of eating her by offering him the sweet-shop cellar, and when that goes wrong she talks him into robbing the surgery. Wilson gives Ernest a low, put-upon growl, a bear who has been let down by everything and expects the mouse to be no different. Brunner plays Célestine as quick-talking and unafraid and never once cute. Fabienne Alvarez-Giro cuts the break-ins like a proper caper, short and clean, and Vincent Courtois’s score stays small and acoustic and leaves the jokes alone. What got to us was a nightmare. Célestine dreams, and Ernest turns into a black bear-shaped smudge that swallows the frame, the watercolour giving way to something like wet ink. It lasts perhaps a minute and it frightened us properly, in a way we had not expected from a film this soft, because it is drawn with the same brush as everything else. The scenes at Ernest’s house in the country, where she paints and he plays and the snow comes down outside, use the same brush to the opposite end, and they are the loveliest thing here. They are also where the film thins. Once the pair have gone to ground, Pennac has to stall, and the stretch of bickering over housekeeping runs a few beats longer than it has material for. The two police chiefs, bear (Vincent Grass) and mouse (Patrice Dozier), are the same joke told twice, and the neatness of the mirrored worlds, two towns, two forces, two prejudices, starts to look like a diagram. The second half moves to a courtroom, presided over by Juge Grizzly (Féodor Atkine), and we will not say how it goes, except that it resolves faster than it deserves to. None of that costs much. At 80 minutes the film has no room to outstay its welcome and does not. Set beside *A Town Called Panic* it is the gentler, tidier sibling; set beside the loud, glossy family animation of its era it looks like a handwritten letter arriving among the bills. Most critics have loved it without reservation. We have one, and it is small. Watch it with a child if you have one to hand, and if you do not, watch it anyway. *Fi1m score 84, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews are uniformly warm, and the praise gathers almost entirely on the look of the film. Nearly every critic singles out the hand-drawn watercolour animation, describing it as a storybook effect and a welcome rest from louder, faster cartoons. The friendship between the gruff bear and the small mouse artist is the other constant: critics call it gentle, odd and old-fashioned in the best sense, with a message about outsiders and small-town prejudice that they think lands without lecturing. Reservations are few and small. The AV Club feels the slight story is stretched to fill a feature. Variety, the coolest of the twelve, finds it charming but pitched squarely at younger children, with only a drop of darkness to keep the adults interested. Nobody dislikes it, and the spread is narrow; the difference between the warmest and the coolest notices is one of degree rather than of kind. ### Reviews we read (12) - **IndieWire**, Beth Hanna (90/100, inferred): The review praises the film as a gentle and delightfully weird animated treat, highlighting its resonant themes of taboo friendship and odd-couple endurance in a sweetly strange story. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/2014/02/review-oscar-nominated-ernest-celestine-a-gentle-and-delightfully-weird-animated-treat-193462/) - **Los Angeles Times**, Betsy Sharkey (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it a charming magical bonbon with a painterly watercolor touch, praising the understated mash-up of a lively tale about outsiders forging an unlikely friendship amid artistic troubles. It singles out the comforting storybook effect as a refreshing departure from hyperkinetic animation. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-ernest-celestine-20140228-story.html) - **RogerEbert.com**, Glenn Kenny (90/100, inferred): The critic finds the film the coziest of the year, praising its gentle watercolor animation style and simple story of an unlikely mouse-bear friendship that avoids Hollywood tropes. The overall integrity and message about overcoming superficial differences are highlighted as key charms. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ernest-and-celestine-2012) - **Screen Daily** (90/100, inferred): The film is a just-about-perfect hand-drawn animated feature that melds visual style and narrative pirouettes delightfully. It follows the unlikely alliance between gruff bear Ernest and artistically inclined orphan mouse Célestine, loaded with charm, adventure, and relatable hopes and fears. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/ernest-and-celestine/5042562.article) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Jordan Mintzer (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it a delightfully old-fashioned children's film with a meaningful message and a clever, timeless tale of an improbable friendship between a bear and a mouse. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/ernest-celestine-cannes-review-325712/) - **The New York Times**, Manohla Dargis (NYT Critic’s Pick): The review celebrates the lovely animated tale of interspecies friendship between a tiny mouse artist and a bear, based on children's books, noting its ode to individuality, pluck, and happiness with those different from us. It singles out the push and pull between childlike safety and adult perils as stirring the heart. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/movies/ernest-celestine-on-the-joy-of-interspecies-friendship.html) - **Vulture**, Bilge Ebiri (85/100, inferred): The film is described as a profoundly civilized and beautiful children's fable with a wise, grown-up heart, full of visual whimsy and a graceful message of acceptance. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2014/03/movie-review-ernest-celestine.html) - **The AV Club**, Mike D'Angelo (B+): The critic finds it an endearingly nutty hand-drawn delight with whimsical sensibility and tender relationship at its core, though it stretches to feature length. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/the-oscar-nominated-ernest-celestine-is-a-hand-drawn-1798179607) - **Slant Magazine**, Wes Greene (80/100, inferred): The review highlights how the film refuses to characterize the central friendship solely on isolation and praises its self-reflexive animation and endearing fable about outcasts carving their own path. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/ernest-and-celestine/) - **Variety** (70/100, inferred): The review describes a charming animated feature with a teensy drop of darkness in its tale of interspecies friendship between a mouse artist and a bear musician-poet, adapted from children's books. It notes the 2D aquarelle-style graphics and skew toward younger audiences while highlighting the meet-cute and scrapes with authorities. [Read](https://variety.com/2012/film/reviews/ernest-and-celestine-1117947646/) - **The Wrap** (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film a delightful animated import that mixes wit, warmth and watercolor visuals to spin a charming tale for all ages, offering whimsy for kids and wit for grown-ups. They single out the visual treats like the underground mouse village and the moving, sweet climax. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/ernest-celestine-review-oscar-got-right-nominating-animated-delight/) - **Eye for Film**, Anton Bitel (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's exposure of small-town prejudice and celebration of artistic sensitivity, while noting its elegant storybook animation style and inventive sequences of collaboration between the bear and mouse protagonists. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/ernest-and-celestine-2012-film-review-by-anton-bitel) ## Details - **Director:** Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Benjamin Renner - **Director:** Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Benjamin Renner - **Screenplay:** Daniel Pennac - **Novel:** Gabrielle Vincent - **Editor:** Fabienne Alvarez-Giro - **Music:** Vincent Courtois - **Production design:** Zyk, Zaza - **Producer:** Henri Magalon, Vincent Tavier, Didier Brunner - **Cast:** Anne-Marie Loop as La Grise (voice); Lambert Wilson as Ernest (voice); Pauline Brunner as Célestine (voice); Patrice Melennec as Georges (voice); Brigitte Virtudes as Lucienne (voice); Léonard Louf as Léon (voice); Dominique Collignon-Maurin as Chef de Clinique (voice); Féodor Atkine as Juge Grizzly (voice) - **Runtime:** 1h 20m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 28 February 2014 - **Genres:** Animation, Family, Crime, Drama, Comedy - **Budget:** $12 million - **Box office:** $8 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ1rmOYLr2U ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: buy $9.99, sd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AT, BE, BG, CH, DE, FI, FR, GB, IE, IS, NL, NZ, RO, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 2014: Best Animated Feature (nominated) - Annie Award for Best Animated Feature 2013: Annie Award for Best Animated Feature (nominated) - NYICFF Grand Prize 2013: NYICFF Grand Prize (won) ## If you liked this - *A Town Called Panic* (2009): Aubier and Patar’s earlier film: plastic toys, shouting, and no sense whatsoever, gloriously - *My Neighbour Totoro* (1988), Fi1m 89: Another large, wordless creature befriended by a small girl, drawn with the same patience — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/my-neighbor-totoro.md) - *The Illusionist* (2010), Fi1m 78: Hand-drawn, nearly silent, and quietly sad about a man whose trade is vanishing — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-illusionist.md) - *Paddington* (2014): A polite bear, a suspicious city, and a household that learns to make room - *The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales* (2017): Renner again, funnier and looser, with a fox who cannot bring himself to be bad --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/ernest-and-celestine