'The Illusionist' is no mirage. Bucking the tide of glossy, computerized 3-D animations, this little French masterpiece is a throwback to the silent-film era when gestures and expressions spoke volumes. The story of a lonely, aging magician who befriends an admiring teenage girl in 1959, Sylvain Chomet's almost-wordless fairy tale is a poetic meditation on friendship, love and the power of deception. Based on an unproduced script written by the legendary French filmmaker Jacques Tati in the late 1950s, the movie features characters created with hand-drawn 2-D graphics, giving them lifelike imperfections that CGI can't duplicate. (Objects, like cars and trolleys, are rendered in 3-D). Music, natural background sounds and the occasional mumbled word provide the only aural sensations. The movie opens in Paris and includes a brief stop in London, but it's primarily set in Scotland. The magician meets the girl while performing in a pub on a remote island and later takes her to Edinburgh, where he takes a series of menial jobs to feed and clothe her. He makes her think that nice things appear by magic, an illusion he maintains until she falls in love with a handsome stranger. Edinburgh's cobblestone streets and medieval buildings are lovingly imagined by Chomet and his animators, who transport us into a magical world that's hard to leave. 