You know that you've become an animation buff when the mere mention of Aleksandr Petrov makes your heartbeat quicken in anticipation. Along with fellow genius Yuriy Norshteyn, he has become one of my favourite Russian animators, and such impressive short films as 'Korova (1989)' and 'The Old Man and the Sea (1999)' rank among my favourites. 'My Love (2006),' Petrov's latest film, was his fourth to be nominated for Best Animated Short at the Oscars, and, though it lost to Suzie Templeton's 'Peter & the Wolf (2006),' it certainly is one of the year's finest releases in any medium. Generally well-received by critics, 'My Love' has nonetheless stirred a few incidents of controversy, including comments from Chris Robinson head of the Ottawa International Animation Festival who apparently took offence to Petrov's pursuit of realism. Likewise, other leading animators, including Norshteyn himself, remarked that perhaps the film was too focused on technology rather than storytelling.
The plot is based on "A Love Story," a 1927 novel by Ivan Shmelyov, and concerns a 16-year-old boy, Antosha, who is searching for his first true love. As he falls in and out of his romantic fantasies, Antosha must decide between two young woman who have captured his fancy a pretty, innocent but uneducated parlourmaid named Pasha, and an experienced upper-class lady named Serafima. He is equally smitten with both lovers, but his inability to choose between them will prove tragic. Pasha is genuinely affectionate towards Antosha, but class restrictions prevent them from coming together without a certain hesitation; on the other hand, Antosha worships Serafima as a "goddess," considering her representative of his lover ideal. When experience reveals a fatal blemish in his idealistic illusions, the young boy rejects the older woman, but not before his indecision has cost him the girl that he truly loved.
'My Love' often treads a fine line of comprehensibility I'm not even certain that my description so far is completely accurate but it's really the visuals that you should be watching out for. Petrov's style of paint-on-glass animation is instantly recognisable, and has all the beauty of a moving Impressionistic painting, the oils and colours shifting smoothly like the quiet waves of an ocean. Though, in order to achieve a sense of "romantic realism," Petrov has produced about 20% of the film using a kind of rotoscoping, he just as frequently descends into fantastic flights of the imagination. Antosha's inner romantic turmoil is represented through beautiful and sometimes terrifying daydreams rowboats on a pond, ships amid a lightning storm, bodies burning in the pits of Hell and Petrov's constantly-shifting style of animation is perfect for evoking the timelessness of our dreams and memories.
