ご苦労様 - Gokurōsama
2016 · 7m · France
Directed by Clémentine Frère, Aurore Gal, Yukiko Meignien, Anna Mertz, Robin Migliorelli, Romain Salvini
Tones: humorous, tender, whimsical
Early in the morning in a Japanese shopping center, an elderly bento-shop owner throws out her back; her young employee tries to help her cross the bustling mall to find relief.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Six directors making a Tati homage in 3D animation about a backache in a shopping mall should be a disaster, but the perversity of that constraint—formal slapstick discipline applied to digital space—actually works, which is infuriating because I wanted to hate it.
A graduation film that knows exactly what it's inheriting from Tati's compositional rigor and spatial comedy, executed with the kind of meticulous control over depth, timing, and crowded-frame choreography that only animation permits; the six-director structure becomes a formal strength, not a liability.
The decision to render a mundane Japanese mall in obsessive 3D detail while keeping the human figures graphically simplified creates this perfect friction—suddenly the environment becomes the emotional landscape, and a woman's back spasm becomes genuinely moving because we're watching her navigate a world that's almost hostile in its specificity.
Reviews
Channeling the spirit of Charlie Chaplin or Jacques Tati, this very funny tale displays impressive attention to detail and great comic timing.
Full of Jacques Tati-like gags, set in a Japanese shopping mall and computer animated with relatively normal proportions for the characters, which allows for the physical comedy.
Festivals
- Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2017
- Animation Show of Shows 2017
- Animafest Zagreb 2017