Water Lily
2015 · 9m · France
Directed by Justine Cunha, Clémentine Delcourt, Alexandra Batina, Margaux Lahuppe, Pascal Miller
Genres: animation, fantasy, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, mythic, sensual
An invented Japanese tale about the birth of the lotus: a nature entity's intoxication of a mortal man, told in hand-drawn-style 3D animation.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A collective of five directors making hand-drawn-style 3D animation about Japanese mythology sounds like it should be precious or fractured, but instead it's weirdly committed to its own sensual logic—which is exactly the kind of formally strange choice that shouldn't work and does.
The decision to render a mythological origin story through hand-drawn 3D rather than rotoscope or traditional cel animation positions this firmly in a lineage of animation-as-painterly-craft; the collective authorship and mythic register demand the kind of sustained visual argument this film sustains across nine minutes.
What makes this work isn't the concept—it's the choice to blur the boundary between painted and dimensional space, letting the 3D geometry exist as if it's being drawn in real time, which is a technical and aesthetic risk that pays off in every frame.
Reviews
The animation, featuring a hand-drawn appearance, flows with muted color and memorable designs; and the narrative is self-contained and satisfying. This is quietly appealing work.