★★1/2 One would have to wonder, at this height of technology, what is the merit of an actor made up with pixels. We are not talking about the ostensibly fake characters (the Na’vi from Avatar, or the brilliant Gollum from The Lord of the Rings) but when the massive image filter tends to tell us a “realistic” story (or something like that) like in The Whale , the story of a totally obese guy (professor, him) who seeks to regain some contact with the world. Those of us who always believed that Brendan Fraser was a great comedian found ourselves with the commonplace of “I’ll do a drama to come back”, used by the trader Darren Aronofsky to give a lesson about the world and its surroundings. Yes, Fraser is fine because, despite the director’s pseudo-avant-garde intentions (read “very old”), he finds the humanity of his creature and knows how to transmit it. The best thing about Fraser’s performance is not the digital kilos, then, but how he looks, something that goes beyond technology and is totally human. If he has an Oscar nomination (deserved) it is more for that way of looking and transmitting emotions with the minimum than with the maximalism created by a computer as obese as the protagonist of the film.
