Mamembre
2011 · 6m · France
Directed by Christophe Feuillard, Sylvain Payen, Caroline Diot, Guillaume Griffoni, Clarisse Martin, Julien Ti-I-Taming, Quentin Cavadaski
Genres: animation, fantasy, horror
Tones: dark, provocative, surreal
In a world where limbs are interchangeable, an over-protective mother keeps her grown daughter dismembered and infantilized, until the girl violently fights to reclaim her body and her freedom.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Seven directors weaponizing body horror as a literal metaphor for maternal control — this is exactly the kind of premise that makes people uncomfortable in the right way, refusing easy sentiment while staying weird and unflinching about it.
The animation carries the weight of a tradition stretching back through Švankmajer and the Czech surrealists, and the formal restraint in depicting such grotesque subject matter shows real sophistication in how it deploys abstraction.
The decision to make the mother's violence against her daughter's autonomy physical rather than psychological — actually dismembering her — is the kind of audacious formal choice that transforms what could be a heavy-handed allegory into something genuinely unsettling and original.
Reviews
ce film d'animation écrit et réalisé à sept mains nous plonge dans un univers sombre et terrifiant à l'étrangeté très assumée, qui aborde la question des rapports de possessivité unissant une mère et sa fille. Court-métrage audacieux et énigmatique qui exploite l'étrange en en assumant le côté noir, « Mamembre » fait partie de ces films insolites et dérangeants qui ne pouvait pas échapper à la sélection de Court Métrange.