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Negative Space

Dir. Max Porter and Ru Kuwuhata

This year’s only stop-motion nominee, “Negative Space” is an exploration of the age-old father-son relationship that defies tropes with its unique storytelling. Adapted from a poem by Ron Koertge, the main character narrates his childhood growing up and bonding with his traveling father by packing his suitcases for him. The packing is always “perfect,” as his father praises him, approval the boy yearns for.

As it turns out, it is less that the boy packs the clothes as it is the clothes that pack themselves, and even the boy himself at one point. As the clothes come to life—a belt imitates a snake, socks become and seaweed, t-shirts swim across the screen—the short animated film becomes Koertge’s poetry, which it is based on. Indeed, “Negative Space” is a son’s ode to his father, and though the narrator’s monotonous voice betrays no emotion, Porter and Kuwuhata insert it into the movie slowly and carefully, ensnaring an unknowing audience into its quiet but lyrical world.

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Revolting Rhymes

Dir. Jakob Schuh and Jan Lachauer

A wolf in a trench coat joins a woman in a café who is waiting to babysit. He flips through the pages of her children’s fairytale book, scoffing—“Happily ever after?”—before embarking on his own tale describing the deaths of his two nephews. Based on the book by Roald Dahl, the animated short “Revolting Rhymes” presents a fairytale within a fairytale. The wolf’s story, which intertwines the lives of the Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, and the Three Little Pigs, doesn’t diverge much from the original, but it does add some grit—and in Little Red’s case, a gun. The two girls meet when Snow White’s mother passes away, and the intricacies of their respective stories start to complicate their friendship as they navigate unstable families, greedy pigs, and voracious wolves. Overall, “Revolting Rhymes” skillfully integrates a twisted subplot within an animation children will love.

As the name “Revolting Rhymes” implies, the wolf narrates in rhymes, but they often carry a morbid gravitas: “The small girl smiles, one eye flickers. She whips a pistol from her knickers. She aims it at the poor boy’s head, and BANG, BANG, BANG—she shoots him dead.” What’s more, the characters sometimes deviate from their expected script. When Little Red finds a wolf in her grandmother’s place, she strokes his snout as she says, “What a lovely great big furry coat you have on,” to which he yells, “That’s wrong! That’s wrong! Have you forgot to tell me what big teeth I’ve got?”

This story of revenge, veiled by idiosyncratic characters and fluorescent animation, is seamlessly multifaceted and full of surprises. Little Red and Snow White become independent women that the classic tales never gave room for. It also ends with a final twist, one that asserts the wolf and woman’s story as its own.

—Staff writer Kaylee S. Kim can be reached at kaylee.kim@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Mila Gauvin II can be reached at mila.gauvin@thecrimson.com.