Loop Ring Chop Drink
2014 · 11m · United Kingdom
Directed by Nicolas Ménard
Genres: animation, dark comedy, surrealism
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
The seemingly unremarkable lives of four bizarre individuals - a heartbroken man, an online gambling addict, an alcoholic kleptomaniac and an anxious loner - collide in surreal coincidences in one mundane apartment block.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Ménard takes the apartment-building-as-anthology setup—the most exhausted premise in indie cinema—and detonates it with surrealist absurdism so committed it actually works; four damaged strangers colliding through pure cosmic arbitrariness instead of manufactured plot mechanics.
The film's formal control over its own absurdism places it squarely in the European animation lineage of Švankmajer and Plympton—each surreal beat is architecturally precise, and the apartment block itself becomes a Bunuelian space of strange geometry and order.
The decisive move is Ménard's commitment to keeping each character's oddness *specific and local* rather than emblematic—the kleptomaniac isn't a symbol, she's just a woman stealing in a particular way—which makes the surreal collisions feel earned rather than imposed.
Reviews
The film showcases Ménard's characteristic bold style, bringing together old school print graphics and seamless animation tell a hypnotic and bizarre tale.