Me and My Moulton

This 13 minutes animated short film is well deservedly nominated for an Academy Award. The film is fresh and vibrant and suitable for both children and grown ups. Told in a light and funny way, the story has a great punch. It even has a great message for those being parents in more than one way.

The drawn lines are crisp, the colors are vibrant and the storytelling is compelling. The freshness is best compared with the greatest animators, not to mention the best Chinese, however there's undoubtedly a clear Scccandinavian feel to the whole production.

A girl narratively tells about her upbringing as one of three daughters of a marriage between an architect and an interior architect, and the consequences this might lead to for those environmentally affected by this. The three sisters wishes for a bicycle, and eventually they are promised one. But it turns out differently than expected.

Director Torill Kove has done it again, after receiving Oscar for her last animated short movie about the Danish story teller H.C. Andersen. It wouldn't surprise many if this film turns up as a second winner for Kove. It's that good!

Me and My Moulton concerns a family made up of three young girls, one the oldest, one the middle, and one the youngest, dually noted by the youngest, and their parents, who are bound in a happy, brightly-colored neighborhood. They hunger to be like the children of their neighborhood, each one of them owning a bicycle and embracing the spring weather, while they do not own a bicycle. Their request to their parents is answered after their father tells them to wait a week or so for their new bicycle, which is being shipped all the way from Europe. In the meantime, we watch as the girls learn to get along with quibbling, to which they are given a monetary reward by their grandmother, who believes that a unified family is the strength of everything.

Me and My Moulton has some quirky hilarity to it, like the fact that the girls live with a family of modernist artists and sit on three-legged chairs for dinner and keep falling off, but the narration coming from the youngest prevents any kind of opportunity for the other sisters to get their say. As a result, their humanization is nonexistent, and we're left with a short that is a bit too uneven in its portrayal of gratefulness and a strong, central family bond. Nonetheless, as is a common theme with the Oscar nominated animated short films, there is a lovely animated style here that resembles that of a Flash cartoon in the best possible way.

Directed by: Torill Kove.

Three sisters live in a small Norwegian town with their slightly eccentric mum and dad. They are both architects and he's the only man in town with a moustache! It's a very regulated life these girls live, especially when compared with their neighbours downstairs who have just about everything they need to have a lively time. The siblings want a bike. They ask their parents and promise to share it, even to ride it all at once if needs be. OK, they agree - but it will be a special bike eventually coming from the UK. Meantime events with the family downstairs take a bit of an unfortunate turn and the girls realise the grass maybe isn't greener. It's quite an interesting concept this. The three girls - with decent age gaps between, wanting what they want whilst their parents still want to exercise a degree of control over not just them, but what they do and have. They are even bribed by their resident grandmother to behave and not bicker! I didn't love the linear style of the animation but the story is worth telling about growing up and independence.

"Me and My Moulton" is a Norwegian/Canadian production by Torill Kove. Kove previously won in this category with "The Danish Poet" and was also nominated for "My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts". Because of this, she might just be the favorite to repeat in this category because may of the Oscar folks are probably familiar with her work. Like her previous films, the animation itself is only fair but it works fine with the story--but the story abounds with a wonderful sense of humor and is exceptionally sweet. It also captures the spirit of what it is like to see the world through the eyes of the young. The film consists of the recollections of a little girl about her life growing up in Norway and it abounds with charm. I only rated it an A- due to the quality of the animation.

Why is it that whenever a woman gets a chance to make a movie, it always has to be a sappy retelling of her own personal life? While male directors make thrillers and comedies and musicals and sci-fis about all sorts of strange characters; women only want to make movies about themselves, and whether you're watching the Oscar nominated shorts or a bunch of shorts from film students, it's always the same. Short movies made by women, are all about the director's own life stories.

This wouldn't have been a problem, had all female filmmakers lived spectacularly interesting lives, but sadly this is not the case, and time and time again I've had to sit through terrible films like this, where a woman tells her "fascinating" story, about the bicycle she had as a child. Another example of this, is the director's previous film called "My grandmother ironed the king's shorts". Well whopdidoo, how interesting. Please tell me more about what pieces of clothing your grandmother ironed.

You see the same trend amongst bloggers: Men blog about politics and technology and cars and all kinds of stuff. Women blog about themselves. The only difference between female bloggers and female filmmakers, is that bloggers aren't funded by the government, like all female filmmakers in Norway are. As the country is officially a feminist state, the law says that 50% of all film funds has to go to female film makers, which means 50% of all Norwegian movies are all the same "female stories" from women who cannot produce anything else than their own boring life on celluloid, because they think they're such special snowflakes.

And the funny thing is, if you ever meet these female directors and ask them how they got funding for their scripts (I've actually asked several) they always reply the same thing "Getting funding in Norway is so easy!" The reason for this is simply because there are very few women who want to make movies, yet the state has decided that 50% of all funds has to go to women, resulting in the same minuscule portion of Norwegian filmmakers constantly getting money to produce a constant stream of movies about their own boring lives.

Yuk!