Honoring the animation of cruelty

  • 2006-03-29
  • By Paul Morton
RIGA - Recently, I received a selection of nine of the films that make up the adult program of the upcoming "Bimini" Fourth Annual International Animated Festival in Riga. General discussions of whether animation is an art form tend to bore the hell out of me. That issue is as old as it is stale. At the same time, discussing the nine films specifically may not indicate what this festival is all about.

That said, I thought I'd focus on "Tango Nero," a short film from Belgium that will be shown at the festival. It may not say everything, but it may say something.
Here's a quick summary: A group of Italian mafia force a low-level hood to steal a ruby in Venice's Basilica di San Marco. A random girl gets involved accidentally. She swallows the ruby, and the two get out of the city as quickly as possible. On the train out of the city, she coughs up the jewel and after the thief seduces her, Italian-style, decides to give it to him. When the two arrive at their final destination, he abandons her. She is left on the street alone, loveless and without a ruby.
The plot is completely illogical. No one would get away with stealing anything from St. Marco. And though crime is common in Venice (as any recent visitor can see from the many knock-off bags for sale on the streets), it's not of the mafia brand the short little film would have us believe.
But none of that matters. We like animation because it destroys our need for logic. A random figure can pop into a frame, flying from a plane or spaceship and we can forgive the change, even embrace it. In the case of "Tango Nero," we don't really care what liberties director Delphine Renard takes.
The film is shot in rotoscope, which means it first used live-action actors and then placed animated movements over them, fuzzing lines between human faces and the background, the same technique Richard Linklater used in "Waking Life" (2001). In Linklater's feature, the effect was to make us listen more closely to the deep philosophical dialogue. In "Tango Nero," the effect makes us accept the strange sex scene on the train, in which the skins of the two participants merge, as well as the odder plot points.
It also makes the final shot, of the woman alone on a city street, after being abused in any number of ways by a very sexy Italian mafia hood, that much lonelier and more touching.
In creating their own logic, cartoons essentially create their own mythology. And in the case of these films, it is a very cruel one. "The Old Crocodile" (Japan) opens with the titular animal eating his great grandson. "The Legend of the Scarecrow" (Spain), a devastating fairytale, ends with an anthropomorphic scarecrow being burned alive by a group of peasants. These are things you could not show with humans in a live action film without earning the label of being pornographic.
In exploring the darkest elements of our illogical nightmares, animation has a way of making us enjoy our worst impulses.

"Bimini" Fourth Annual International Animated Festival
April 5 to 9
More info: www.bimini.lv