The Girl in the Photo

When I first went through this message board, I noticed many people asking about the girl in the photo at the end of the movie. The details are left ambiguous, but we are to assume that it is the daughter of The Illusionist, either dead or estranged from him. Still, despite the logical assumption, some were curious about the details. Up until the very end, it is a very subtle reference, the photo kept very far from the camera.

I just read Roger Ebert's review of the film, and there was an interesting note in there. The film is based on the life of a real actor/director by the name of Tati. This shouldn't be much of a surprise, the live action film shown in the middle of The Illusionist is one of Tati's works. However, I didn't know that Tati himself had written the original draft of this script, based on his own life and loss. One of Tati's descendants wrote to Ebert.

" After "The Illusionist" played at Cannes 2010, I received a letter from his middle grandson, Richard Tatischeff Schiel McDonald, telling me that the Chomet version "greatly undermines both the artistry of my grandfather’s original script whilst shamefully ignoring the deeply troubled personal story that lies at its heart."

Briefly, he writes, Tati "in the script wrestles with the notion of publicly acknowledging his eldest daughter, my mother, who he had under duress from his elder sister, heartlessly abandoned during the Second World War." It is a fraught family story, and the full and fascinating letter is here: http://bit.ly/dkigRT.";

For the sake of the film, it seems the director kept the loss more subtle, and the film more whimsical (indeed, focus on that history would have changed the tone of the film greatly). But for those curious, there is the information. A daughter, abandoned, a choice he regretted forever afterward.