Les Ventres
2009 · 17m · France
Directed by Philippe Grammaticopoulos
Genres: animation, dark comedy, sci-fi
Tones: absurdist, dark, surreal
In an industrialized society where people eat only genetically modified food, a man who finds his snail too small engineers a way to breed ever-bigger molluscs for profit — until he falls victim to his own process and the eater is eaten.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A capitalist snail-breeding body-horror nightmare that treats grotesque mutation as inevitable comeuppance—this is exactly the kind of premise that makes people uncomfortable in the best way, and it refuses to moralize or explain itself, which is why it works.
Grammaticopoulos positions this within a lineage of absurdist animation that traces back through Eastern European satire, using metamorphosis as formal language; the restraint in how the grotesque unfolds shows real compositional discipline.
The decision to animate this as deadpan sci-fi rather than outright satire is what elevates it—that tonal choice, holding the absurd premise with a straight face, creates a tension that a live-action or expressionistic approach would immediately undercut.
Reviews
Par le biais d'une dimension onirique et inquiétante qui n'est pas sans rappeler la peinture de Magritte, Grammaticopoulos fait apparaître une masse robotisée et déshumanisée. Quand l'arroseur est arrosé, le mangeur se voit mangé.