Vive la rose

I've been having a kind of a love affair with the stop motion technique, using real images. Well, using puppets as well, but that's quite a different thing. Real images stop motion is what i've been looking for. I think what fascinates is the time lapse sensation. I mean, objects gain a life of their own, they move on their own, yes. But even we're seeing photographed objects instead of people, there is a sense of time elapsing. So it is a matter of what we don't see that captivates you. It's a good experience. This film is as fresh as it gets, in relation to the use of the technique, and the way it looks. As fresh and lovable as the landscape that it starts to frame. Basically it is a music clip to a certain song, and it doesn't move away from what a vclip may be. But there are two notions that interested me, and probably make the film to me:

-one is how we are transported from the outside to the inside. We start looking at a big landscape, we pan towards a shack, we get in that shack, towards a desk, where a drawer gets opened, and we get a close-up of that drawer. It is a well structured shot, which probably could be interesting if this was a simple live action film, but the way this is put, with stop motion that cuts fluidity to the sequence, it gets interesting in an awkward way. At the end of the film, we'll see the landscape once more, since we'll have a kind of fast forward reverse initial shot. This allows the film to breathe, and frame the sequence inside the drawer, and also to give it a context;

-the drawer, which is the majority of the film. What interests me here is how the frame we have coincides with the drawer and how that frame is divided into different boards, literally divided by wood separations inside the drawer. So we have different boards, where different things happen. To enhance this, on one of those boards, instead of stop motion we have animation through drawings, inserted into the photography of the stop motion. On the other board we have plain stop motion.

Two notions of framing. One at the scale of the big film, the other inside the very frame of the drawer. Good. The music gives a good feel to the film, or the other way around. It's a simple exercise, and it doesn't go beyond what we see, but it is good enough.

My opinion: 3/5

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The plot here, summed up by someone at the Newport Beach Film Festival, pretty much sums up this story. It reads:

"The tale of a tragic love story set in Newfoundland. When illness takes the woman he loves, a simple man raises his voice in melancholy song as a last farewell. The film, based on a song by local musician Emile Benoit, is anchored in a beautiful, remote corner of the province, and pays homage to its land, sea and the harsh lives of the local fishermen."

So how is this seven-minute animated short from the National Film Board of Canada presented?

Well, it's different but on first look, there is too much to take in. A second and a third look, this short film gets better as you become more familiar with it - and the song which inspired it - and you can concentrate on one area. Your eyes and brain can't focus and three different things happening on screen at once, all the time. That's what we have here, so see this more than once and it will get better and you'll appreciate it more, too.