Layla
2024 · 6m · France
Directed by Oscar Baron, Diego H. Blanco, Emma Ferréol, Rachel Gitlevich, Lucille Reynaud, Narda Rodríguez
Genres: animation, comedy, coming-of-age
Tones: darkly comic, provocative, tender, whimsical
Three 12-year-old skater boys buy a sex robot expecting to leap into manhood, but when the moment of truth arrives they chicken out and instead form an unlikely friendship with her.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Gobelins kids weaponize a sex robot premise into a sweetness factory, and weirdly it works — the back row got got. Age-gated YouTube with 2.6M views means everyone already knew this was the move.
A Gobelins exercise that risks tonal catastrophe and somehow earns its tenderness, channeling Genndy Tartakovsky's elasticity into territory I'd more readily associate with the early provocations of Don Hertzfeldt. The age-restriction gate is real, but so is the craft.
A Gobelins grad film that's pulled 2.6M views and 173K likes despite YouTube age-gating it — the Tartakovsky-via-Dexter's-Lab linework lets these skater kids' bravado read as both armor and tenderness in the same beat. The provocation works because the animation refuses to leer.
Reviews
What starts as an awkward experiment morphs into an unlikely friendship... an impressive short film that's more compelling and nuanced than many animated shows seen on TV.
A very entertaining, energetic short film with a lot of personality and a quite striking color palette that impresses at all times, being visually spectacular.