The animated Bao Oscars and the confused memories of the end of the afternoon

One of the major badets of the animation is the visual vision of imaginary landscapes, and Pixar's "Bao" and Cartoon Saloon's "Late Afternoon" films have been able to exploit this phenomenon. their way. While "Bao" releases bitter-sweet memories of motherhood when a Chinese dumpling magically animates as a cute and cuddly boy, "Late Afternoon" releases forgotten memories of growing up for an elderly woman with dementia.

With "Bao", the fantastic tone of the fable format has done wonders for Pixar's artist, Domee Shi (the first director of short films for the studio). She drew on childhood memories of having grown up as a Canadian of Chinese descent in Toronto. In her short film, a lonely Canadian-Canadian woman has a second chance to raise children, but her excess of possessiveness leads to grief and the first moment of the studio's WTF, followed by an emotionally charged twist .

"Bao"

Pixar

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"For" Bao ", we wanted to explore this universal feeling that we all have to learn to give up something you really love," said Shi, currently doing his first feature film under Pixel's new regime directed by Pete Docter, director turned creative director, who framed it. "It's because parents learn to give up their children when they grow up and it changes the relationship.

"But we wanted to say that with a culturally appropriate brush, so that the household and the characters reflect my mother and my relationship with her," Shi added. "I was an only child and smothered by her, with love, with all the best intentions. And then, the fact that the story looks like a letter of love to this culture, but also to the food of Chinese culture. Food and family, in many cultures, go hand in hand to express our love and affection for the people we care about. "

This is an original and beautiful short film (reminder of "My neighbors the Yamadas", of Isao Takahata, recently deceased). There were a lot of animation challenges involving characters with huge heads and bodies, so Shi encouraged the artists to break the models, stretch the limbs and lock the camera. But getting the look of ravioli was more difficult than anything else. Fortunately, Shi's mother, Ningsha Zhong, a true dumpling master, has been a consultant. The animation team photographed his folding techniques and then carefully recreated them in CGs.

The fantastic saga of dumplings was inspired by Asian fairy tales that Shi heard in her little girl "about elderly, lonely people, who find babies or children in a flower, a peach or a sprout. bamboo, "she said. "I was fascinated by fairy tales playing with dark, clear elements and this woman is going through a lot of things this week."

But when the mother eats her dumpling son in a shocking way to prevent her from leaving the house, the director finds it "really cool to see everyone panicking. Some panting and start crying right away. For them, the metaphor is much clearer and concerns something more personal. Finally, other people will understand what happens at the end of the short film, when the real son comes back after arguing. "

"Late in the afternoon"

Cartoon saloon

Meanwhile, Bagnall, born in Dublin, is inspired by her own childhood memories when she wrote "Late Afternoon" (late afternoon). Her two grandmothers suffered age-related memory loss, and she wanted to explore the impact from one generation to the next. "When I was growing up, I did not really understand that in my childhood," she said. "For my parents, seen through their eyes now, as adults, I realize that it must have been much more difficult.

"But I never saw them as women who lived a busy life. So when I started the movie, I really thought a lot more about what their life should be like growing up, at another time, getting married, what it meant for a woman. This has guided me. "

Bagnall, supervised by Tomm Moore ("The Song of the Sea", "The Secret of Kells") and Nora Twomey ("The Family Supporter"), directors of Cartoon Saloon (Oscar nominees), treated the fragments of fall in love, pregnancy and motherhood. "It gives the public a bit of insight, but it also allows them to fill in the blanks," she said.

Bagnall uses water as an important visual metaphor, starting with a cup of tea and later by images of the woman floating in space. "It makes a lot of sense to lose memory because the water is constantly erasing, erasing the lines in the sand, slowly eroding those memories," said Bagnall, who is currently working as an badistant director on Twomey's latest animated movie, "My Father of the Dragon," for Netflix.

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The way the colors evolve is also linked to the flow of memories: "It starts with this bright red, then they become a little colder, more purple and blue, then the roses are complicated more and more in his life," he said. said Bagnall. "And as colors become more and more invasive, it reflects how she [experiencing] these memories come back to him.

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