THE work of the great comic book artist Jacques Tardi is cleverly and beautifully carried to the big screen in “April and the Extraordinary World” (“Avril et le monde truque”), a surreal sci-fi period piece that reimagines mid-20th century Paris as a smog-filled, steam-powered Napoleonic empire whose future lies in the hands of an orphaned young woman — voiced by French star Marion Cotillard.

    Winner of the top prize at this year’s Annecy fest, the Studio Canal release — directed by Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci — is another case of Gallic animation providing a witty 2-D alternative to mainstream feature-length fare, in a movie that pays homage to both film noir and Jules Verne while satirizing France’s industrial past.

    Tardi has been one of France’s leading graphic novelists for several decades, employing a thick clear line style heavily influenced by films of the 1930’s and 40’s, with many stories set within the grim working-class neighborhoods of Paris. He’s illustrated everything from Celine’s “Journey to the End of the Night” to historical accounts of the first and second world wars.

    Transforming Tardi’s unique world into a full-fledged narrative, screenwriters Ekinci and Benjamin Legrand (who penned the original “Snowpiercer” comics) imagine what would happen if France around 1941 was still stuck in the Industrial Revolution, with automobiles and overhead cable cars powered by fossil fueled steam engines.

    Choking in a polluted haze, Paris is depicted as a gloomy capital flanked by not one but two Eiffel Towers and ruled by Napoleon V, who’s entrusted a tenacious police chief, Pizoni (Benoit Briere), to capture a serum that could render France’s army immortal in the ongoing world charcoal wars.

    The serum is the invention of a family of scientists who, in a fast and fun prologue, are shown to have all but disappeared, leaving behind their teenage daughter, April (Cotillard), to carry on their mission.

    April is a tomboyish loner who’s only friend is her snide talking cat, Darwin (voiced by actor-singer Philippe Katerine), though she soon teams up with one of Pizoni’s agents Julius (Marc-Andre Grondin), on a journey that will take them to the heart of the empire and beyond, revealing the vast conspiracy that has made the world what it is — and could possibly make it better.

    There’s plenty of social-political satire to chew on in the filmmakers’ depiction of a France that’s technologically far behind the times but arrogant enough not to know it, with lots of comic relief coming from April’s granddad, Pops (the great Jean Rochefort), who one-ups everyone around him with his brilliantly wacky inventions.

    Providing many tongue-in-cheek moments amid an otherwise dark tale of greed, hubris and environmental devastation, Ekinci and Desmares artfully portray an extraordinary world that’s never too far from our own, and the film’s save-the-planet message is as pertinent right now as it is in Tardi’s twisted parallel universe of steel, smoke and urban malaise.

    It’s only when the story heads to pure sci-fi territory later on that “April” stretches itself a bit thin, though a smart epilogue manages to put things in perspective for both the characters and viewer.

    The movie is now being screened in Hong Kong. (SD-Agencies)