The Great Malaise
2019 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Catherine Lepage
Genres: animation, dark comedy, drama
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, melancholic
A young woman narrates an ideal self-portrait of success and happiness while the images show the anxiety underneath. Catherine Lepage's animation contrasts societal expectations with the quest for perfection.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise is basically 'Instagram vs. reality,' which sounds like every therapy session animated in the last five years—but Lepage's refusal to resolve the contradiction, to just let the dissonance sit there, is genuinely uncomfortable in a way that matters.
A formally precise study in visual counterpoint; the animation technique sustains the tension between voice and image with the kind of disciplined restraint that recalls earlier Quebec animation traditions while speaking to contemporary anxieties about self-presentation.
The entire film hinges on Lepage's choice to keep the narration impossibly upbeat and self-assured while the animation peels away each claimed success—it's a single structural decision that transforms what could've been obvious into something that actually stings.