Tuesday 22 March 2022

The House (Emma de Swaef & Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr and Paloma Baeza, 2022)

 

A stop-motion animation film with three different stories, this may have the linking strands, owing to having only a single writer behind all all three, of all of it being set inside the same house and each part being saturated in a creepy surrealism. But the end results, after the adjustments made by each director, are wildly variable.
The first, about a family offered a huge house by a wealthy architect in exchange for their own hovel, is the one that stands out, having the clearest sense of purpose. It becomes truly unsettling as their new home turns into a maze they can't escape from and the parents literally become part of the furniture.
The second and the third, respectively featuring anthropomorphic rats and cats voicing mundane human concerns and agendas, are less sure-footed. Yes, the animation is still splendidly realised and the dialogue is witty, but using animals instead of the blank-faced people puppets of the first part feels a little aimless, as if that's just what you're supposed to do with stop-motion, rather it than adding any value to the stories.
So, a mixed bag, but still one with plenty of incidental moments to savour, including of course the game of identifying all the well-known voice talents behind the puppets.

6/10

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