Aprés la Pluie
With evident inspiration from director Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle) comes an all together unique and amazing short film by five students from the Gobelins school of animation in France. Students, yes, you read that right. Unbelievable.
Set within a stilted village in the sky, a boy is fishing in a puddle with a banana for bait when suddenly, impossibly he gets a bite. He lands a creature far bigger than he could have imagined, and far too big to handle. What follows is a breathtaking sequence of shots, punctuated by an unexpected and abstracted ending.
I loved this film for its awe-filled imagery and simple execution. The painting isn’t half bad either, nor is the animation. Sometimes a story doesn’t require fully fleshed out characters. Sometimes the experience itself is reward enough, and this is one of those cases.
Not much is revealed regarding exactly who did what, but the team who concepted and executed this stunning short includes: Charles-André Lefebvre, Manuel Tanon-Tchi, Louis Tardivier, Sébastien Vovau and Emmanuelle Walker.
