‘I Am Frankelda’: Mexico’s First Stop-Motion Feature Delivers Burton-like Visuals
I Am Frankelda is an accomplishment in stop motion. A prequel to Cartoon Network Latin America’s stop-motion series, Frankelda’s Book of Spooks, the film is considered the first Mexican stop-motion feature film. With Netflix releasing the film to a wider audience, more people can enjoy the dark-fantasy realm of Topus Terrenus. While its themes are shallower and the lore can feel contrived, the film rivals Tim Burton in visual ingenuity and wacky, gothic world-building.
Francisca Imelda (Mireya Mendoza) doesn’t conform to the expectations of 1866 Mexico. She’s a creative kid, constantly writing gothic-horror stories and building worlds of terror. After her mother’s death, she’s left in the care of her grandmother, who forces her to be more of a housemaid than a writer. Francisca uses her writing to escape from the difficulty of her life. She writes of a heroic Prince Herneval in a fantastical realm called Topus Terrenus, a world full of bizarre creatures called Terrors. Many years later, an 18-year-old Francisca is still writing of that gothic world. Feeling defeated by failed attempts to publish her work, she decides to use the pseudonym Frankelda. However, what Francisca doesn’t know is that Topus Terrenus is a parallel dimension that becomes real through her writing.
The world of Topus Terrenus is in danger. The creatures in it are sustained by the human fear produced by children’s nightmares. But in a modernizing world, nightmares can be explained away and no longer produce fear as reliably. Desperate, the Prince of the realm, Herneval (Claudis Bridgeforth/Arturo Mercado Jr.), looks for solutions to his crumbling world. Because Francisca writes about him so much, she inadvertently gives him a bridge to cross from his dimension to hers. Recognizing the quality of Francisca’s horror writing, Herneval believes she may be Topus Terrenus’s only hope.
