Screen Romance
2015 · 6m · France
Directed by Emma Decoster, Melanie Merny, Eglantine Vittu, Tiphaine Cordiez
Genres: animation, musical, thriller
Tones: dark, melancholic, surreal
A washed-up 1940s music-hall star sinks into delirium to stay young forever.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Four directors collaborating on a 6-minute animated descent into madness about a faded performer—premise alone should be a mess, but the fact that they made it work as dark musical thriller is exactly the kind of genre confusion that usually fails and occasionally becomes something unforgettable.
A formally rigorous study in visual and narrative deterioration, where the animation style itself becomes the protagonist's unreliable perspective; the restraint of keeping this to music-hall tradition while letting it slip into surrealism shows real curatorial intelligence about how genres speak to each other.
The decision to animate the star's delirium as a visual feedback loop—where her movements begin repeating, degrading, becoming almost glitchy—does the entire thematic work without a word, and that single formal choice justifies four directors and a theatrical premise on a short-film budget.