Meet Buck
2010 · 4m · France
Directed by Denis Bouyer, Yann De Preval, Vincent E Sousa, Laurent Monneron
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, surrealism
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, whimsical
Buck — a man with a deer head — visits his girlfriend on a Sunday afternoon, and when he meets her father, things go very badly, very fast. A surreal short by the TeamCerf collective.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The TeamCerf collective's collective genius here is the performance direction — every human character reacts to Buck's deer head as if it is completely normal until it isn't, and that sustained straight-faced commitment to the absurd is what makes the father's hostility land as something more than a sight gag.
Deer-headed guy meets girlfriend's intolerant father. Played straight is the right call, and 1 million views with 16K likes suggests it lands. French animation collectives do this well.
TeamCerf plays the deer-headed man completely straight — no meta-commentary, no winking — which lets the father's intolerance land as both comedy and social allegory. A surrealist gag with real social bite.