The Pearce Sisters

In the words of its makers, The Pearce Sisters—a short film based on the story by Mick Jackson and produced by Aardman Animations—is "a bleak hearted tale of love, loneliness, guts, gore, nudity, violence, smoking and cups of tea." And you know how well tea parties and loneliness mix. Enter the sisters, Lol and Edna Pearce.

Living "a miserable existence on a remote and austere strip of coast", the two old spinsters are eager to find company, with the complicity of the sea. Possibly male—handsome— grateful? Though they'd hardly win the heart of any living man, The Pearce Sisters won Best Short Animation at the 2008 BAFTA Awards.

Director Luis Cook has been at Aardman Animations since 1994, but this is his first (second, if you count the title sequence for the London Film Festival) non-commercial work. At a time when beauty often seems less exploratory, and more of a formula, it's refreshing to see a film dive into the aesthetics of ugliness. With every detail in every scene transporting us into this parallel universe born from Luis Cook's mind—a world both austere and humorous at the same time. As my friend Mike appropriately asked, "If the sisters had only gotten a bikini wax… would things have turned out different?"

One can only guess.

Read this and other online film reviews at www.ShortoftheWeek.com

i don't know whether i would be capable of "feeding" my visual imagination the whole time, every day, with animations like this. What i mean is, whenever we watch a film, any film, animated or not, we get into the world of its author (at least when the film is a bit interesting). But in "real image" films, that world is built from a number of elements the author picks from several places from the world of "reality" and those elements are bended to the author's specific vision and imagination. Two different directors given the same elements will necessarily produce two different works (the same way two architects with exactly the same constructive elements and program and place will produce two distinguishable buildings). This also applies to animation when its made over "serial" processes or when the visual conception include many creating people.

But when we have "authored" animation, like in this case, this whole question of "entering a new world" gains a whole new meaning, and we visit a whole new dimension. This is because everything is fully generated by someone's imagination which is, of course, rooted in real aspects and real elements, but every element comes twisted and bended to one specific interpretation (style?), and this submits those elements and everything that happens to new rules, new laws. That's at the same time the most fascinating/disturbing aspect of animation and the one which can keep me more distanced from it. That is because either you really get into the world, and enjoy being there (it can make you happy, upset, reflexive or purely angry, but it has to be a fascinating/seducing world) or it will be a bad time for you to be there, inside the core of the author. In this case, these morbid sea observing characters were an interesting world to check, but it makes me more tired to watch 9 minutes of this than a whole feature film made over real flesh and bone characters. I'm interested in trying to figure out why this happens. This film made me revive my relation to animation, at least in this level i referred.

My evaluation: 3/5 it may not cause you what it caused me, but it still has interesting elements.

http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

Two lonely old spinsters live by the seashore and spend their days catching fish and making tea . One day they find a shipwrecked sailor washed up upon the shore and take him back to their shack

A BAFTA award winning animated short but if you think this is a family friendly cartoon be warned that it's anything but . The horror aspect is very well done but dare I say it's may be done a bit too well ? The imagery is grotesque and is keeping with the downbeat nihilistic feel of the story which often reminded me of John Hillcoat's film THE ROAD . I should point out that this animated film came out before the Hillcoat film but does feel like it exists in the same universe and timeline of that movie . That said the concept of two ladies living alone having an anti-social life threatening lifestyle isn't original and we've all heard of ARSENIC AND OLD LACE if not seen it for ourselves and while that film was genuinely amusing her everything is totally grim . It also manages to convey what's going on very well since there's about only one line of dialogue and is a good short despite the humour being a bit too black for a mainstream audience