Tikkun Olam in "The Painting"

Jean Laguionie's animated film Le tableau is a thinly veiled philosophical treatise.  

still from Le Tableau, from a profile in L'Express

In the self-contained world of the painting, the Toupins (the completely painted figures, rendered in groanably punning English as "the Alldunns") lord it over the Pasfinis (the unfinished "Halfies") and the Reufs ("Sketchies").  The Alldunns live it up in a sumptuous chateau and espouse not just snobbery but nihilism:  they conclude the painter is never coming back and may not even exist.  And surely there is nothing outside of the painting ("il n'y a pas de hors texte," n'est-ce pas, M. Derrida?)—!

The Halfies and Sketchies live in fear of Alldunn bullying, but the Alldunn youth Ramo—très French with his auk's nose and cyclist's body—is in love with the Modigliani-esque Halfie Claire and challenges the smug Alldunn elitism.  An adventure with Halfie Lola and Sketchie Plume ensues, during which the travelers emerge into a dusty live-action studio and discover other paintings.  They have a chat with an odalique and a permanently grumpy self-portrait of the painter before moving on to Venice in permanent Carnival mode.

The idea that the painted characters don't even need the painter—why couldn't the Halfies and Sketchies just paint themselves and their world?—seems consistent with the classic Jewish concept Tikkun Olam (repairing or healing the world).  It's up to us, not the Almighty, to build a perfect society in an effort to bring the world to perfection.

The cosmogonic question, Who painted the painter? crosses physics, religion, philosophy—and film.