La Mécanique du Cœur – Novel and Album
And novel it is indeed! La Mécanique du Cœur, by the French rock band Dionysos, is both a novel and an album of accompanying songs, telling the tale of a young boy from 19th Century Edinburgh, born with a heart so cold that his witch-midwife replaced it with a clockwork one, so that he may live. A sad tale of Steampunk, then.
The video above is what clinched this for me, however, beautiful animation with a faint “Nightmare Before Christmas” feel to it, with the unfortunate young man finding that a clockwork heart can break just as easily as a real one. More animated cogs than you can shake a beautifully designed pagoda parasol at, and a particularly sad ending to this miniature narrative. I do not know what they’re singing, but I do not mind terribly – it’s perhaps even more lovely because of it.
Thank you so very much to Mr Martin for pointing this out – and you can read much more about it at the Filles Sourires blog.