“Animation is not a genre”, He said not once but three times (or was it four?) Pablo Berger with the award that marked him as director of the European animated film of the year. In fact, he said it in English and, to be fair, he was repeating a phrase from Guillermo del Toro. His idea, despite what it may seem, was not so much to celebrate the loving and even transgender frenzy that the production of every animated film experiences, but perhaps also to claim the absence of borders. There are dramas, comedies, musicals, thrillers or horror films, and these can be made with actors, animators or puppeteers; with words or without them. What matters, so to speak, is narration, the pleasure of telling and, if necessary, the simple love of listening and narrating; not, in fact, gender. Again, “animation is not a genre.”
Halfway through the most boring and arrhythmic ceremony (not critical. That’s its charm) that European beings have invented, one of those moments arrived when generally one gets up to do something. It doesn’t matter what. This is when, for example, the technical awards already given out are presented (by the way, I already had the ones for special effects and makeup and hairdressing – two – The Snow Society, by Juan Antonio Bayona). And immediately afterwards, with almost no time to sit down after doing whatever it was (it doesn’t matter what), it was the turn of Spanish animation in its entirety. We won’t say it was a historic moment (there are precedents), but almost. Suddenly, an industry that does not exist (or that exists little), not content with having up to three films in the race for the Oscars (Unicorn wars, by Alberto Vázquez, and They shot the pianist, by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, are the others), took the prize. Robot Dreams was crowned the European animated film of the year in the 36th edition of these awards. It could be said, and it is said here, that Europe, like the film itself, was left speechless. “Animation has no gender.” It is clear.
The silent story of love, friendship, loneliness, loss and forgiveness (the film is all about that) between a robot and a dog according to Sara Varon’s graphic novel was thus related to Anatomy of a fall, that, yes, this one has gender. Although it varies and at times it is a thriller, at times a drama and, when no one expects it, an autopsy. After winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, French director Justine Triet’s film was chosen as the film (without surnames) of the year. Now in Europe, but soon probably much further away. For her, there were also the awards for address,script (signed by the director herself and Arthur Harari), actress (the ubiquitous Sandra Hueller). Before, he had taken over the assembly. Five in total. The only one missing, of the important ones, was that of actor, which went to Mads Mikkelsen, for his work in The promised landthe Nikolaj Arcel.
Let’s say that the European Film Awards, in addition to having a strangely bland gala, can also proudly boast of being very predictable. But without bad blood. It is not recrimination. There, we said, lies its glamour so peculiar and so unglamorous. Nothing to object. A logic that could well be described as overwhelming was thus fulfilled. Others also called it an avalanche because it conceptually rhymes with the fall of the French title. Truly, it was gravity. Serious and pure gravity. Originally, gravity designated the phenomenon that explained why apples, instead of being suspended in the air after being freed from the tree, had (and still have) the ugly and hateful vice of committing suicide against the ground. Over time, things like Einstein, it became clear that it was not that, that it was rather affection that moved fruits endowed with mass to approach someone with even more mass, the Earth.
And when you look at it, here we go, the winning film is essentially that: a boast close to collapse, of the collapse under its own weight of an irrefutable cinema exercise. And it is not suicide, although there is some of that, like pure narrative enthusiasm. Pure and serious affection. Life as a couple is dissected and each of the learned schemes and concepts are subjected to a merciless analysis that, far from helping us understand anything, perhaps hide the truth. It sounds somewhat cryptic and, believe me, few films are so clear, so forceful and so true.