Affairs of the Art

The animation is truly incredible. Now, I usually enjoy quirky characters, but there was just way too much animal abuse in this short for me, that it was repulsive and the disgusting sister and the dead body was very hard to watch. While I'm happy NFB got an Oscar nod, I just wish it was for a different film.

There are worlds that mix with each other and are forced to coexist even though they seem strange to each other. In Affairs of the Art, family, death and art are balanced and they also coexist, sometimes too much, with each other. The characters, therefore, are most imaginative, realistic and strange; each with their own individual passion, each with their own contrasting qualities.

Animation plays a fundamental role in the construction of such a twisted and realistic artistic-family world, and it uses each of the advantages of traditional animation by hand to stay chaotic, not to fall into the static, the dead. Its best quality could also be its worst mistake: its intricate narrative, without connection or adherence, which serves mainly to complement the highly imaginative style of animation... to show us the observation, innovation, resolution, experience and preservation that comes from the soul of the artist, the soul of the Beryl family and probably of every person who indulges in art.

Of course, it also has its disadvantages, and those come from its great ability to offend its audience, to appear too cruel, too exaggerated and disrespectful, to generate conflict and disapproval. Probably if you are very sensitive you should not see it and hope that it fascinates you.

Director Joanna Quinn's lovable protagonist Beryl returns, telling her own story of her childhood, her family, and herself as an artist and a mother.

The storytelling in Affairs of the Art is fluid and compelling, the characters strikingly honest, and Joanna's distinctive style absolutely captivating. In this film about art, each hand drawn frame of the animation is a work of art in itself.

Affairs of the Art absolutely deserves all the awards buzz it's received, with wins across the festival circuit as well as BAFTA and Oscar nominations.

This is a sick and disgusting film from apparent sociopaths. Joanna Quinn and Les Mills should be ashamed of themselves. Repeated depictions of animal abuse and killing cats for fun is not "art," nor entertainment, even in an adult animated short. Anyone here who applauds a ghoulish sadistic film like this should have their head examined, and possibly have any pets in their homes removed or at least monitored for signs of abuse. Art can provoke, but art that purposely offends clear moral boundaries around animal abuse is a sickness. There is nothing redeeming about killing pets for fun. It is appalling the Academy nominated this sociopath's fantasy film for an Oscar. I could not watch this perverted sadistic short past the scenes of children purposely abusing and killing a pet mouse by blowing it up with firecrackers and then killing a pet cat with a bow and arrow. The film is barely 16 minutes, yet it manages to depict children killing two pets in the first half. Shameful, gruesome, cruel and horrid.

Nice drawings, explosion of imagination, fair portrait of a family and dark humor in large doses. And exploration of cruelty, in different forms, with cold results.

The irony rules in this case , and it is very less pleasant. Because , as a sort of roller coster, it is a splendid analysis of different ages and their bizzare behaviors, crisis of maturity, a gray marriage and the kids and their ways of succes.

Not the last, moving for sort of nice translation of melancholia, for familiar crumbs of childhood , for dialogues and small details , for the spirit of child, from fascinations or experiments to the pure forms of cruelty.

So, a sort of short animation animated by reflections of eccenticity.