On an autumn afternoon, this was such a perfect film, poignant and funny, and as soon as it finished I wanted to see it all over again. The Illusionist is a vaudeville magician on his uppers, who meets Alice, a young girl who is convinced that his magic is real. (It's based on a previously unfilmed screenplay by Jacques Tati.)

I loved the old-fashioned animation evoking rain-drenched London and soot-blackened Edinburgh in the late 1950s; a world of third-class British Rail carriages and dingy theatrical digs. I giggled at the Scottish fish and chip shop with ideas above its station; I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when the magician thinks he has eaten his nasty-tempered rabbit in a stew. And I felt really sad that the cinema was almost empty because I thought this gentle, nostalgic film was a work of art.