Café Bar (1974)

User Rating:

6.2/10   

Director:

Alison De Vere

Writer:

Alison De Vere (writer)

Genre:

Short | Animation

Plot Keywords:

Dream Sequence | Brushstroke Animation | Dinosaur | Restaurant | Damsel In Distress

Runtime:

6 min

Country:

UK

Language:

None

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:U

Company:

Wyatt-Cattaneo

Movie Connections:

Edited into Short 2: Dreams (2000) (V)

Fascinating

This short is identified as a "brushstroke animation", but I'm not sure exactly what that means. The style is clearly different from that of conventional animated movies, because movements are not as closely synchronized from frame to frame, resulting in some herky-jerky action, not to mention a really bad hair day for the heroine.

The story is simple - a man and a woman walk into the "cafe bar" together, and they converse in gibberish while daydreaming in fairly stereotypical terms. The story is not the main interest, at least for me - what kept my attention was the attention to how we perceive and idealize ourselves. Each of the pair imagines themselves in impossible situations which allow them to do incredible things. Their imaginations, in this case, prevented them from seeing each other.