Marcy's Tenderloin
2013 · 3m · UK
Directed by Sophie Koko Gate
Genres: animation, comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, whimsical
An RCA first-year animation exploring how one person's interest in another diminishes the moment that interest becomes reciprocal; Marcy discovers she is subject to this social law and must navigate its consequences.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Seen beside Half Wet, this first-year RCA piece already reveals Gate's characteristic move — embedding social theory inside an apparently gentle visual idiom — which makes it archivally significant as a document of a voice forming.
First-year RCA, sardonic premise about desire evaporating on reciprocation. Smart idea, student execution — the next film (Half Wet) is presumably the one to watch.
Sophie Koko Gate's first-year RCA film encodes a sardonic social theorem (desire evaporates upon reciprocation) right into the arc. Three minutes of animation built around a thesis rather than a punchline.