Maman, il a quoi le chien? (Mom, What's Up With the Dog?)
2021 · 7m · France
Directed by Lola Lefèvre
Genres: animation, coming-of-age, dark comedy
Tones: melancholic, provocative, surreal, theatrical
Eleven-year-old Gwen catches her dog laughing as she begins to discover her own sexuality, unleashing a scratchy, surreal animated journey through the primal confusion of puberty.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Eleven-year-old discovers puberty, dog starts laughing. Egon Schiele-inspired animation about feral early adolescence — the cheekiness alone is enough, and seven minutes can hold a single unsettling joke.
Lefèvre rendering pubescent confusion through Egon Schiele-inspired scratched animation, with a laughing dog as the feral metaphor — Annecy-recognized, and the comparison to Titane is not undeserved. Seven minutes of unguarded adolescent unease.
Egon-Schiele-inspired scratchy animation style is the load-bearing aesthetic choice for puberty as feral surrealism — and a laughing dog as the metaphor for emerging desire is the kind of specific, weird image that only works in animation. 7 minutes, Annecy laurels — the visual idiom is doing the heavy lifting.
Reviews
Neither angers nor placates; it only scratches consistently a surface to reveal what is underneath.
Scratchy and loud, the film unleashes the primal gestures of puberty through its young lead Gwen, blending nightmare imagery with coming-of-age discovery.
Festivals
- Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2022, Jury Mention for Graduation Film
- Hiroshima International Animation Festival 2022, Personal Choice Award (Honami Yano)
- Berlin International Short Film Festival 2022
- Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2023
- New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival 2022, Best Student Film
- Animatou 2022
- Anim'Est International Animation Film Festival 2022
- Tricky Women/Tricky Realities 2023
- La Guarimba Film Festival 2023