This unique French animation brings us a small felt animated family who are all coping differently with their trauma.

Malo is the little brother who is being hounded by his angry and frustrated teenage sister Zoe.

 

Zoe is unpleasant to her brother, but we see that she has no outlet for her feelings due to her mother’s distant nature. Zoe may feel she has no other way of expressing herself. All the family are coping in different ways with the trauma, and due to this they are all extremely distant from one another. Most captivating is the mysterious ghost-like figure, Mom.

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Mom is a rather creepy looking felt character, her skin extremely pale compared to her children. She has hypnotic black dots surrounded by milky blue, watery looking eyeballs. She looks visibly washed out and is detached from her children, barely speaking to them.

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The use of the felt is clever when it encompasses Mom, which appears to be a symbol of her feeling overwhelmed and seemingly depressed. Her own body is consuming her.

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The unusual use of objects to depict the road when the car swerves is a fascinating use of visuals. The violins in the background create a morbid low tone of darkness yet urgency of the scene unfolding.

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Overall, the felt characters are both sweet and creepy at the same time. This depicts the mood of the short, as we are unsure what to think of it. It evokes both unpredictability and mystery, yet empathy at the same time as we see how they all cope differently.

What are they going through? This question is both the interest and downfall of the short film. Whilst the car drive builds suspense, the ending is quite unsatisfying. It is an entirely open ending that answers nothing to satisfy the reader, and unless the element of trauma is abundantly clear, it could leave the viewer confused and unsatisfied.

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Nevertheless, if the aspect of trauma is what the viewer notices is being conveyed here, then it is a quaint short film that presents each character’s emotions effectively to represent different ways of coping with trauma.

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Its uniqueness and suspense keeps us watching and this has been recognised through its title of ‘Best Animation and Sound,’ by the Visibility Film Festival 2021.