NOIR-SOLEIL
2021 · 20m · France
Directed by Marie Larrivé
Genres: animation, drama, mystery
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal, tense
After an earthquake in the Bay of Naples uncovers the body of a man believed dead for forty years, a father and daughter travel to Italy for a DNA test, and the past surfaces to reshape everything they understand about their family.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Larrivé's painterly animated noir — its watercolour surfaces as formally unstable as the family history it excavates — belongs to a distinguished tradition of French animated short filmmaking that treats the medium as a vehicle for psychological and literary complexity.
Watercolour expressionism, a forty-year-old corpse, an Italian DNA test — yes, fine, I'll concede this one. Twenty minutes is long, but the form actually justifies itself for once.
Marie Larrivé's watercolour expressionism making the animation itself feel like unstable memory — twenty minutes of father-daughter mystery anchored to a real earthquake premise in the Bay of Naples. Beautiful idea, real craft.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival 2022