The first of two stop-motion shorts from the Netherlands this year, “Beautiful Men” follows three brothers: The pudgy and shy Koen, the more athletic and outgoing Bart, and the neurotic Steven. They are linked by all of them being bald. The trio is in Istanbul, currently awaiting hair transplant operations. That's when Steven realizes he screwed up the booking and only one surgery will be performed. While milling around the hotel the day before the operation, a choice must be made over which of the three of them most “deserves” to have a full head of hair.
“Beautiful Men” is clearly about masculine insecurities. Koen struggles to do a single push-up and is concerned he has a growth on his testicles, which he asks Steven to take a closer look at. Bart is shown repeatedly attempting to coordinate a sexy video date with a woman, that always gets interrupted. Instead of really commenting on this idea in any concrete way, Nicolas Keppens' film mostly snickers at them by repeatedly putting the trio into homoerotic scenarios. Steven examing Koen's testicle happens in a public bathroom stall, the entire moment looking a lot like some oral sex is about to be performed. Bart spends nearly the entire short with no pants on and his stop-motion penis hanging out. A hug between the two guys is a key moment. The narrative thrust is evident: These three men need the support of each other to truly feel accepted, not long flowing locks.
Unfortunately, “Beautiful Men” barely does anything with this set-up. A dramatic event happens in the last third, setting up an ironic ending that... Goes absolutely nowhere, the final scene ending the story on an absolute shrug. While the situations are certainly awkward, I can't say I found this one all that funny or insightful. Perhaps the Academy voters are more impressed by the sight of cartoon male frontal nudity than I am. The stop motion animation is very well done, the characters looking disturbingly life-like at times while remaining exaggerated. There's some very cinematic camera angles and nice use of fog. But this one truly left me scratching my head. [5/10]
In a minimalistic, seemingly Middle Eastern landscape, a bearded man and his daughter live in a simple house on the beach. After he has a violent outburst, the daughter decides to leave the next morning. That is when she finds a whale beached outside. The two try to drag the whale back into the ocean but have no success. The man begins to live on a boat nearby, his daughter still frightened of him. He is haunted by memories of a violent past while the woman attempts to care for the beach the best she can. Soon, their rescue attempts of the massive animal and their tense relationship come to a head.
"In the Shadow of the Cypress" is one of those animated shorts full of visual symbolism that clearly means something. The setting is dream-like, a single house on a flat stretch of sand that isn't clearly a beach until we see the ocean and the whale. The characters' physical forms shift with their emotional state. When the girl leaves, the man turns into flower petals and embraces her. Later, his skin changes to grey when he starts to feel sad or upset. The woman melts like ice cream on the sidewalk during a later scene. These surreal touches pair with a vague storyline, told without any spoken dialogue. I wasn't sure, at first, if the woman was the man's wife or daughter. Their exact relationship and history is only hinted at. Whether he's abusive or mentally ill is up to the viewer until the film is all but over. Moreover, the beached whale clearly means something as well, some sort of emotional baggage between the two. When the flashback arrives, it features the man shooting at a jet fighter. The plane is more realistically rendered than the rest of the short – which looks like that corporate art style you saw everywhere a few years back – and that brings a political undercurrent to these symbols. Directors Hossein Molayemi and Shinrin Sohani are Iranian, the film presumably reflects the strife of the war torn parts of that country.
What we are supposed to take from all this is a lot harder to determine. The plot synopsis describes "In the Shadow of the Cypress" as a film about PTSD, which is not immediately apparent. The surreal setting and allegoric writing makes it hard to tell if the story is set in the modern day, making any political reading difficult. The strife between the man and woman is clearly because of his deteriorating health but we have no attachment to any of these characters, who operate more as unclear symbols than people. This doesn't give me a lot to hold onto in "In the Shadow of the Cypress." The scene where the girl sticks a funnel in the whale's mouth and pours water in made me chuckle. The increasingly abstract animation, most apparent during what I presume is a PTSD flashback, is certainly impressive. However, this one mostly felt like a peek into a bigger, incomplete story that is intentionally obscured with interpretable artistic choices. It's interesting, I suppose, but I didn't get a lot out of it. [6/10]
The Animated Feature branch of the Academy overlooked a number of fine films from Japan this year but at least one sneaked into the Animated Shorts category. Not that “Magic Candies” looks much like most people's conception of “anime.” It follows Dong-Dong, a young boy who is often alone but swears it doesn't bother him. He picks up a pack of strangely colored marbles at the store before being informed that they are actually magical candies. Each one has a unique pattern and, when Dong-Dong pops them into his mouth, he can suddenly communicate with whatever matches the pattern on the candy. First, it's the sofa, which asks him to remove the remote from his side. Next, the aging family dog gets a chance to explain to Dong-Dong why they can't play the way they used to before reflecting on their time together. The third gumball enables him to hear the affectionate thoughts of his otherwise strict father. Slowly, the magical properties of each gumball brings Dong-Dong out of his shell.
“Magic Candies” comes from Toei Animation and Daisuke Nishio, who has spent most of his career directing episodes of various “Dragon Ball” and “Pretty Cure” series. Despite that, “Magic Candies” is brought to life through a clever combination of stop-motion animation and CGI. The characters and environments all have a tactile quality to them, the fabric of the couch looking properly shaggy, the pours in the people's skin visible. The character have an oddball appearance that smartly borders the line between cute and ugly. The creativity extends to how the film communicates some of its ideas. When Dong-Dong chews on the candy, he often sees the kanji of what is trying to talk to him float through the air. In the penultimate sequence, in which falling autumn leaves each say good-bye to the boy, “Magic Candies” reaches a level of genuine beauty too.
Story wise, it's a short and sweet endeavor. The emotion is never heavy-handed, the film staying quiet and subtle when Dong-Dong is talking to the spirit of his deceased grandmother or reminiscing about the good days with the elderly family pet. This makes the emotion that does appear – such as the connection the boy finds with his dad – feel all the more earned. It leads towards a predictable but equally sweet ending, making this into a nice little fable about how the world opens up to you if you're willing to listen. When combined with the lovely visuals, “Magic Candies” stands out as probably my favorite of this year's crop of animated shorts. [8/10]
The second stop motion Dutch short of the night featuring a surprisingly amount of on-screen male nudity is “Wander to Wonder.” It concerns the stars of an eighties children show with the same title, in which a live action host has conversations and shares life lessons with a trio of fuzzy little creatures named Fumbleton, Mary, and Billybud. Unfortunately, “Uncle Gilly” seems to have dropped dead in the middle of recording and nobody has checked on his friends in all the time since. They continue to wander around the empty, abandoned studio. Mary continues to video tape lessons for an out-of-reach audience, while Billybud has developed a fixation with Shakespeare. As their limited food resources run dry, Mary begins to wonder how the three of them will survive for much longer.
The central joke of “Wander to Wonder” is one we've seen countless times before: What if we contrasted the sugary, cutesy world of children's programming with depravity or other types of darkness? At least there seems to be an actual point here beyond that. There is definitely something melancholy about these three miniature homunculi attempting to carry on as usual, despite literally being surrounded by death and decay. A scene in which Mary reads what must be a decades-old fan letter is my favorite in the film. The puppets and environments have a likably grungy quality to them. The idea that, say, the Neighborhood of Make Believe puppets or the muppets on “Sesame Street” were played by tiny actors who are now forced to fend for themselves is one with potential, for both humor and pathos.
Sadly, like a lot of the shorts this year, “Wander to Wonder” never seems to arrive at any sort of point. Yes, there's a tiny sculpted dick flopping around in this one too, as the short moves towards something like a conclusion to its story. Albeit one that doesn't resolve anything nor tell us much about where these three will wind up. Mary and the clumsy Fumbleton retain the personalities they had on the show, which is a fun idea. That Billy has developed into a seemingly insane actor, however, spoils that premise. Considering how open-ended both the beginning and end of “Wander to Wonder” is, it feels more like a pitch for a feature film than a self-contained story in its own right. Another one I have to assume was nominated more so for the quality of its animation than for its narrative merits, though I came away liking it more than “Beautiful Men.” [6/10]
At least the night ends on a suitably adorable note. “Yuck!” is a French, hand-drawn short set at a vacation camp. The little kids, dragged their with their parents and older siblings, all love to point and tease whenever they catch the grown-ups kissing. In this world, people's lips glow pink and sparkle whenever the desire to kiss arises. And the little kids think it's just the grossest, ickiest thing in the whole wide world, never letting a chance to declare this feeling go by. Among the girl of kids is Leo and Lucy. As much as they react with disgust to the sight of kissing, both of them are actually curious about it. At night, when left alone, they finally get a chance to see what the big deal is all about.
“Yuck!” does a nice job of capturing an memorable time in many people's lives, when the vaguest inklings of romance – sex being totally beyond the mind's frame of reference at that point – is an object of both curiosity and caution. The kids are obviously fascinated by kissing but can't find any other way to express that other than exaggerated disgust. It's an easily understood behavior that this short captures quite nicely. Despite expressing how gross they find kissing, these kids sure do think about it constantly! Within the opening minutes, you figure out that Leo and Lucy aren't actually so repulsed by kissing. It's a natural part of childhood, developing a slow and totally innocent interest in romance or whatever passes for it in your still-growing kid brain.
The animation in “Yuck!” is bright and colorful, the character designs having a slight Ghibli influence in how expressive their mouths and eyes are. The surreal touch, of lips glowing when a desire to kiss emerges, leads to several delightful moments. Such as when Leo spies two soccer bros looking at game footage together and their own lips glowing. I like the idea that attraction and desire can be obvious on someone's face, no matter how hard they may work to disguise them. It leads to a cute, rather lyrical conclusion. “Yuck!” doesn't break any new ground but it's charming and cute, a well observed snapshot of a less cynical time in life. [7/10]
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