BEFORE: Tonight's film is the latest feature from acclaimed indie animator Bill Plympton. If you happen to know me in the real world, you might think the fix is in, and say, "Hey, don't you work for a guy named Bill Plympton, and hasn't he just completed a new feature about infidelity, which could benefit from some promotion?"
OK, you caught me. I've been running this blog for over 5 years, staying up late every night watching movies and posting reviews just to gain your trust - the 1,649 reviews I wrote were all just lulling you into a false sense of security, so you wouldn't recognize my clever marketing when the time was right. You have to admit, it's a bit of genius, since you never saw it coming.
Yes, I have been employed by the director of tonight's film for over 20 years, so for me to review it seems at first like a massive conflict of interest. But where I used to serve as his producer, on films like "I Married a Strange Person" and "Mutant Aliens", my role in his studio now is about 98% administrative. We have other employees who get producer credit, and I work mostly on film festivals, accounting, merchandise sales, and Comic-Con matters. I've been there three days a week over the last four years while this film was created, and honestly I've been so busy that I never had time to sit down and WATCH the film. I wanted to see it when it premiered at a festival, but that time came and went at Slamdance, and I wasn't able to make it.
Then a few other things happened - I programmed my February romance-based films as usual, and I came to a definite break in the actor linking. Plus I noticed that a lot of this year's films dealt with lies and infidelity, and I started to feel that "This Is 40", the film originally programmed for tonight, might not fit with that theme. That's when I said to myself, "Hey, don't you work for a guy named Bill Plympton, and hasn't he just completed a new feature about infidelity, which could benefit from some promotion?"
Well, when I put it that way, it seemed kind of weird that I wasn't going to review the film. I started this process to watch all the movies in my collection I hadn't seen, and technically this film is not in general release (we're working on it), but all I had to do was bring home a spare DVD from the studio - boom, it's in my collection. Conflict resolved.
If I have any qualms about the ethics of all of this, I think that's a minor concern. Go ahead, call the blog police on me if you want. It's very likely that I'm so close to the film that I might not be able to review it at all - the only way to find out is to watch it. If anything, I expect that I will be overly critical of the film, because I expect so much out of my boss and co-workers. You don't just become the "King of Independent Animation" by calling yourself that.
No linking tonight, because this film has no name actors. In fact, there's no dialogue. More about that later.
THE PLOT: In a fateful bumper car collision, Jake and Ella meet and become the most loving couple in the long history of romance. But when a scheming "other" woman drives a wedge of jealousy into their perfect courtship, insecurity and hatred spell out an untimely fate. With only the help of a disgraced magician and his forbidden "soul machine", Ella takes the form of Jake's numerous lovers.
AFTER: Well, it's sort of as I feared. I can't really give an unbiased review, but for different reasons than I suspected. I've been working in the world of animation for over two decades, and my role has changed a lot. I've fixed scripts, edited 2 books, and have dealt with many problems concerning logistics, scheduling and mechanics. You say this festival in France lost the print, and we might miss three scheduled screenings in Germany as a result? I'm on the case, give me the phone and I'll yell at some people, plus get another print diverted to Germany so we don't miss a festival. You need these four big boxes shipped to San Diego to arrive on time, but not too early? I've got that down to a science.
It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't work at a busy animation studio, but I mostly fix problems all day long. That creates a certain level of stress, which produces adrenaline, which is kind of like a drug. Fixing a problem (or organizing something) makes me feel good, which creates dopamine, which is another kind of drug. So I ride this roller-coaster of stress and relief for 6 to 8 hours a day, and it's like yo-yoing between espressos and vodka shots - when I'm on vacation sometimes I miss it, I crave it. But I've been conditioned to look at this man's work and spot the typos, or in the case of his films, any continuity mistakes. As a result I can't really see the forest for the trees.
On another level, I've also conditioned myself not to challenge him on story issues. Not only has he earned the right to make whatever story he wants to make, I suspect that in a way the film already exists within his head, and my role as an employee is to get out of his way, and not prevent him from making the film his way, so that it will match the vision in his head. In a way I think I'm like Adam Richman of "Man vs. Food", who claims to have worked in nearly every major job in the food industry. That word "nearly" leads me to believe he's never been a chef, and the difference between a chef and a cook is that a chef can create his own recipes, and a cook can only make other people's. In the animation world, I try to be a good cook and not question the chef. I can help the animator tell his story, but I don't think I could create a piece of animation on my own.
That being said, animation is all about exaggeration and overkill. Think about Daffy Duck getting shot in the face. It's not funny if he gets a hole in his beak and bleeds, but it's hilarious if his beak gets blown to the back of his head, his face turns black from the smoke and he gives a dirty look to the camera. But I was always the kid watching Road Runner cartoons thinking, "A coyote can't really survive a fall off of a mountain, right? Or getting squashed by a boulder?" I had to get it straight in my own head that I wasn't watching reality before I could enjoy it.
I need to have a conversation with the director about some technical issues - one should never try to put out an electrical fire with water, for example. And I wish that he would take a few minutes to learn how a fire hydrant works, or the way that women apply make-up, because then he would be able to draw those things better. But since this is the cartoon world, and since he can draw just about anything, he just makes things happen the way he thinks they should. Anyway, we've locked picture and it's too late to fix these things, so I probably should have watched this film a year ago.
In the story, we have a male character, Jake, who believes that his new bride, Ella, has been unfaithful. So he goes right out and cheats too, but not with 1 woman, with many. That's the exaggeration inherent to animation, but you have to wonder if it comes from a genuine place. Every gag has an element of truth to it, after all. Bill has stated at screenings that this film is based on a previous relationship, and not his wife. That's a relief, because I know his wife and she seems like a very nice person. Jake is not Bill, of course, but yet maybe he is, in the way that you are every character in your own dreams, and this film is sort of like Plympton's dream.
Everything is sort of sexual in this world, from filling up a gas tank (obviously), to making breakfast (eggs boiling, coffee percolating). Yeah, this is an adult animation for adult people, which hearkens back to the sex scenes in his film "I Married a Strange Person", where objects in the room like shoes and electrical outlets all started fornicating around the main characters. There are also references to shots from "Hair High", where the sexual electricity between two characters was expressed as a very literal spark of energy between them. Anything can happen in this world, and metaphors are sometimes expressed quite literally - to depict a character having her heart broken, we can see that heart splitting in two.
Of course, it's hard to express emotion in a film without dialogue. I know why this is done, because a large part of Bill's audience is overseas, and this film is already scheduled for release in France, under the title "Les Amants Electriques" ("The Electric Lovers"). The less dialogue, the better it will translate to foreign markets, without the extra cost of subtitling. But I think this is also something of a storytelling challenge - can this story be told just through visuals and music?
The music here was coordinated by Nicole Renaud, a great French singer and songwriter. There are a number of familiar classical pieces, like the Drinking Song from "Il Trovatore", and the famous "Can-Can" theme, from "Orpheus in the Underworld", which you may never think of the same way after seeing the visuals that accompany it in this film. I do get to learn the names of some classical music this way - the rest of the music was composed or sung, or both, by Nicole, and she did a great job. It all helps set the tone for scenes where dialogue was not used.
Speaking of dialogue, I know that I was never asked to type up this screenplay - why would we need a screenplay if there are no actors to read from it? It makes sense on some level, but going into production on a feature film without a solid script (I assume he made some form of storyboards, but still...) is kind of equivalent to jumping out of a plane without a parachute, and saying you'll figure something out before you hit the ground. That requires guts, or insanity, or perhaps both.
I'm trying to get back to the plot here - Ella hires a hit-man when she learns about Jake's infidelity. Bill has also stated this film was greatly influenced by the work of James Cain, who wrote the novels that noir films like "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "Double Indemnity" were based on. The addition of the hit-man and his girlfriend sets up a sort of love quadrangle with Jake & Ella, which is made more complicated by a machine which allows Ella to send her soul into other women's bodies.
I'm not sure what this says about the characters, if the only way that a woman can be intimate with her husband is by taking the form of his mistresses. There's something almost Shakespearean about that, like mistaken identity caused by cross-dressing, which is what The Bard favored. It's also kind of kinky, like someone who can only get off by wearing a particular costume. But again, it's only in the cartoon world that someone can become more intimate with their spouse by having sex with someone else. And the "Soul Machine" is quite literally a "deus ex machina" of the highest order - the effects of the machine determine whether this relationship can be saved.
So, does Jake cheat? If his wife's soul is inhabiting the body of his lovers, isn't he sleeping with his wife? I guess this becomes a debatable point. And what does this all mean? Again, I think I may be too close. Imagine if you were personal friends with Martin Scorcese, and you played bridge with him every week. If he went and made a film about someone cheating at cards, you might watch that film very closely to gain some insight, and you might not be able to stop wondering if he's cheating during your weekly game.
I'm still glad that I watched this, because I'm entering it in film festivals, and we'll be promoting it at Comic-Con for sure, and knowing what takes place in it will help me out a lot. Perhaps I should recuse myself from giving a rating tonight, because if I rate it too high, it won't seem genuine, and if I rate it too low, I'll stop getting a paycheck. I'm going to just go with my gut, pick a number and move on, like I do every night. It is what it is.
And if you'd like to find out when this film might be playing at a film festival near you, please visit:
http://www.cheatinmovie.com/screening-list/
RATING: 6 out of 10 motel reservations
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