Cat Meets Dog

The scouts

Driessen's parallel-worlds structure *sounds* like the kind of postmodern toy-box that should collapse under its own conceit, but the fact that it doesn't—that the romance thread somehow holds across four simultaneous narratives—is genuinely disorienting in the best way. Most films would choose one world and exhaust it; this one respects your vertigo.

A lineage film: you can trace the DNA back through Švankmajer's formal logic and mid-century animation craft, but Driessen's decision to fracture the narrative into parallel suspense beats shows a real understanding of how animation syntax differs from live-action—each world becomes a variation on a formal theme, executed with the precision of someone thinking in frames, not just story beats.

The editing decision to cut between four worlds while maintaining emotional coherence on a romance arc that has no 'correct' ending—that's the move that justifies the whole premise; without it, this collapses into visual novelty, but Driessen uses the cuts themselves as the storytelling tool, each splice a micro-choice about what we feel versus what we see.