Affairs of the Art
2021 · 16m · Canada
Directed by Joanna Quinn
Genres: animation, comedy, family
Tones: absurdist, humorous, whimsical
Beryl, a working-class drawing enthusiast, reveals her family's competing fixations from pickling to taxidermy. Household obsessions pile up in comic detail.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Quinn's domestic-obsession comedy feels almost too *polite* for a contrarian move—but the refusal to punch down at these working-class eccentrics, the way taxidermy and pickling get equal spiritual weight, that's quietly subversive in ways the film doesn't advertise.
Quinn's command of the form is exemplary—the way each household fixation builds in formal accumulation, the animation's economy of line, the tonal calibration that honors both the comedy and the genuine tenderness underneath; this is craft-aware animation that knows exactly what it's doing within the British animation tradition.
The decision to let Beryl's voice ground the chaos—warm, unglamorous, unsentimental—transforms what could be a gimmick-driven list into something genuinely tender, and that single tonal choice makes the whole pile of quirks feel like love rather than ridicule.