Agua Viva
2018 · 10m · USA
Directed by Alexa Lim Haas
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A Chinese manicurist in a Miami strip mall struggles to articulate her emotions and her displacement, performing manicures and pedicures while contemplating how she ended up so far from home. Rendered in hand-drawn, hand-painted animation.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Animation used for the right reasons — to enter a consciousness the camera can't reach. Quiet, painted, and refusing to perform its sadness.
Watercolor-textured hand-drawn animation about a working-class immigrant interior — Lim Haas occupies a register American animation refuses, and the Wong Kar-wai daydream comp is well-earned. Beautifully held.
Watercolor-textured hand-drawn animation about a working-class Chinese immigrant manicurist's interior life — a register American animation almost refuses. Lim Haas writing, directing, and animating means the voice is totally hers.
Reviews
A gorgeous, melancholic portrait of a stranger in a strange land