Fragmented and animated, this film explores the relationships, loves and heartbreaks of four characters who can’t understand each other. We are offered the different perspectives on how Olivia, Ramón, Bárbara and Mauricio interconnect and how they deal with their ghosts, secrets and disappointments, in a film whose delicate animation unfolds in symbologies of unusual beauty. The first feature film by Dominican Tomás Pichardo-Espaillat is a visual and aural gem.
In his first feature, Dominican director and animator Tomás Pichardo-Espaillat takes a seed from Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage” and plants it in his native soil, cultivating a tender and surreal story of mismatched affections. Olivia’s past love lurks beneath her bed, trading tearful clouds for flowers, while Ramon’s feelings blossom in a potted plant. Barbara pours her unreciprocated tenderness into the fictional characters of her own animation, and Mauricio, who rejects her… Well, I won’t reveal all the secrets!
This film, a decade in the making, is a collaborative effort by a team of local animators brought together by Pichardo-Espaillat who embraced their diverse styles within the discontinuous storyline. As a result, the disjointed world that celebrates subjective viewpoints grew into a community where shared imagination and knowledge flourished. Pichardo-Espaillat works as a sculptor, blending elements of 2D, stop-motion, clay, and rotoscope animation with Super 8 footage and a rich soundscape, crafting a tapestry of human connections in all its imperfect beauty.
Anastasia Lukovnikova
