Ubornaya istoriya - lyubovnaya istoriya

LAVATORY LOVE STORY is a Russian cartoon about a lonely lady who is an attendant in a public bathroom. While it is a relatively common practice in Europe, many Americans might be surprised to see people pay to enter a toilet as well as having someone of the opposite sex cleaning the restroom. Also, it's interesting to note that everything is written in English--not Russian.

Like last year, I went to a special showing of the Oscar-nominated animated short films. However, unlike last year, in addition to the nominees, several "commended films" were also shown. In this review I'll make my predictions, though if it's anything like last year's choices, I'll probably once again pick the wrong shorts as my favorite for the award.

LAVATORY LOVE STORY is the most surprising of the nominees. That's because usually the animated films are extraordinary when it comes to the artwork, yet this film has very, very simple animation--so simple I am surprised it received the nomination. By comparison, last year's Russian nominee (MY LOVE) was like a moving impressionist painting and LAVATORY LOVE STORY consists of simple black and white drawings. To the film's credit, despite having ordinary artwork, the story is very enjoyable. Deep? No. But very cute and pleasant. But, once again, not special enough, in my opinion, to merit a nomination--especially when some of the commended films were clearly better.

Because of all these factors, I consider this film to be the definite "dark horse" of the five nominees--with what appears to be the least chance of taking the award. Still, it's enjoyable and worth seeing.

UPDATE: LA MAISON EN PETITS CUBES was the winner this year. Not surprisingly, I got this one wrong but saw the film as a strong contender.

A woman who collects change at a pay as you go lavatory suddenly has flowers put in her jar. The movie shows her efforts to discover who is trying to alleviate her humdrum lonely existence. The animation is all simple line drawings and it works pretty well.

I just found this Oscar-nominated short animated film on YouTube as linked from Mayerson on Animation. Originally from Russia, Lavatory-Lovestory is a funny and touching tale of a woman in a box office-where men going to the restrooms put coins in the former mayonnaise jar while on their way to relieve themselves-reads a newspaper called "Happy Woman" and sees picture after picture of romantic couples coupling and wishes she was in the same boat. She also cleans the restrooms while skating on brushes. When she puts the paper down one day, she finds flowers put in the money jar. When getting rid of said flowers, other ones appear when she gets back. It's at this point that this woman looks in both the restrooms and outside the terminal for the mysterious man...Like I said, this animated short was both touching and humorous and the line-drawings on white background adds an entertainingly distinct touch to the proceedings. Nothing more to say except that I very much highly recommend this quite entertaining Russian animated short Lovatory-Lovestory!