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But Milk is Important |
The programme begins with the visually dazzling ninja pic Yeondansu (Chaeyoung Park, South Korea), whose paint on glass animation is a standout among the competition. Following the ninja swordplay is a chilling avant garde piece called Lonely Bones (Rosto, France/The Netherlands), which is an elaborately constructed nightmare and hallucinative film about the dark side of dreams. Psychoanalysts in the crowd will love it, as will fans of challenging and formally inventive works. This Maya Deren-ish piece is a highlight of the programme. Equally noteworthy is the dreamlike gangster film Thugs with No Legend (Gianluigi Toccafondo, France), which is bound to garner some attention thanks to the credit of Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone as a producer. Thugs is a haunting and gritty throwback to old-school gangster films as Toccafondo accentuates live action violence with unforgettable ghostly animations that make the violent tale unsettling and macabre.
Other strong points in Short Competition 5 come with two of
the festival’s standout black comedies, Trouble on the Green (Hanne Galvez,
Yoann Hervo, Stéphanie Pavoine & Pierre Zenzius; France) and Like
Rabbits (Sticky Ends, chap. 2) (Osman Cerfon, France). Both these
French entries see grumpy, melancholy men—one a stodgy Frenchman and the other
a morose fish—spread their cantankerous attitude amidst an atmosphere of joie de vivre. Trouble is a funny apocalyptic tale while Rabbits is an endlessly laugh-inducing carnival ride that brings
death from bunnies and birds. Both films have an off-kilter visual scheme to
complement their quirky tale of doom.
Doom and destruction are magnificently realized in Theodore
Ushev’s Gloria Victoria (Canada), which I reviewed during the
Toronto International Film Festival but must praise again. Ushev’s experimental
opus of the history and legacy of the war machine is doubly impressive on the
big screen. An imposing staccato work that culminates as both a tribute and an
addition to the legacy of wartime iconography, Gloria Victoria is a stirring film. It demands to be seen with the
sight and sound of a theatrical experience in order to be appreciated in all
its glory. Gloria Victoria is easily
the best Canadian film in the competition.
The rhythm of Gloria
Victoria is followed smartly by the two-step rivalry of Ping-Pong
(Natalie Krawczuk, Poland). Ping-Pong
sees two friends face off in a game of table tennis sans rackets, ball, or
table. A comic relative of the mime tennis match in Antonioni’s Blow-Up, Ping-Pong animates the missing game pieces in the minds of viewers
as they follow the increasingly frenetic match. Ping-Pong ends with a hilarious bang—sorry, bad puns are becoming
infectious thanks to the “give him the hook” intros that begin each screening—and
will have viewers laughing and declaring the competition “game, set, and match”
for Ping-Pong.
A rival for the latter two films for the title of best film
in the programme, not to mention “Best of the Fest,” is the hilariously bizarre
But
Milk is Important (Eirik Grønmo Bjørnsen & Anna Mantzaris, Norway).
But Milk is Important is a strange
and surreal tale of a lonely apartment dweller who feels responsible for the
death of his apartment superintendent when he sends him off to the corner store
to fetch some milk. As the hermit watches the super stroll back from the
errand, said superintendent keels over and dies, crushing the carton of milk
and marinating in it as his life slips away. The milk-loving recluse is then plagued
by a visit from an overly friendly fuzzy creature, which looks like a cotton jellybean
with fleas. The cute creature hangs over him like a shadow, invades the man’s
space, and tries to push him out of his comfort zone. But Milk is Important has occasional currents that make the film
feel like a nightmare, but it evolves into a sweet fable about overcoming one’s
fears. The ingenious mix of style and the wickedly-handled shifts in tone make But Milk is Important a consistently suspenseful
and constantly funny odyssey. But Milk is
Important is surely a frontrunner for OIAF’s audience award if the
enthusiastic reaction to the film is any indication. It would be fitting to see
a film from Short Competition 5 represent the best that OIAF has to offer.
Short Competition 5 screens again:
Sunday, Sept. 22 at the ByTowne at 11:00 am.
Please visit www.animationfestival.ca for more
information.