Flatlife (2004) User Reviews

Yes, they didn't exaggerate, this is really a good short animation movie.

[philip_vanderveken · 8/10 · 21 July 2005]

How often will it happen that a young guy sends his very first, not even finished, movie to one of the most famous film festivals in the world and then sees how it is not only selected as one of the movies that will be shown during the festival, but even gets nominated for the Golden Palm and gets the Jury Prize? Normally you would say never, but it happened to Jonas Geirnaert, a young student animation who sent in his unfinished graduation-work and astonished the world with it.

"Flatlife" shows life in a block of apartments. Even though the four inhabitants don't seem to have anything to do with each other, their actions influence the lives of the others. When for instance one of them switches his television to another channel, the other one's television switches channels too. When the washing machine of one of the inhabitants malfunctions, everything in the other apartments starts shaking around...

I don't know if Geirnaert wanted to give us some kind of message with this short film. I guess there are many different ways of interpreting it all, but in my opinion that's not even the most important part of the movie. Thanks to the sometimes absurd humor (like for instance a flying panda), this is just incredibly funny. And although I feared that I wouldn't like it all that much, because I was expecting a lot, maybe even too much of it (over here it was an incredible hype), I must admit that there was absolutely no reason for that fear. This was just a very good short animation film which made me laugh out loud a couple of times. I give it an 8/10 and I hope that Geirnaert will come up with more movies like this in the future.

A day in the life of...

[PeterJackson · 8/10 · 9 July 2004]

This short by young fellow Belgian Jonas Geirnaert is already notable for the fact that the guy went to Cannes with his yet to be finished film, actually his graduation film (not yet judged by his teachers), won an important prize and had a remarkable speech afterwards saying "Don't vote Bush, in case Michael Moore shouldn't have the chance to say that this evening". This got him the recognition of a large part of the public, not in the least Moore himself. So, maybe we got a major filmmaker of the future on our hands here, ...with or without the help of MM. Now, is the short worth the fuzz? Pretty much so, yeah. It's a pretty darn funny and imaginative short, all the more remarkable by being the product of such a young filmmaker. I'm not sure what it's it trying to say, I guess you can interpret it in different ways, but I surely liked it and laughed several times. Catch it if you can. 8/10

Some truly hilarious stuff in here

[Horst_In_Translation · 8/10 · 9 November 2017]

"Flatlife" is, despite the title, a Belgian animated short film from 2004, so this one will have its 15th anniversary soon. But don't worry non-Belgians as there is no spoken dialogue in this one here and you can enjoy it without subtitles wherever you come from. Thanks to the great deal of awards recognition it received, including a win at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, this is probably writer and director Jonas Geirnaert's most known work still. And chances are high sadly, it's gonna stay that way as at least the animation style he uses here is not suitable for full feature films. The screen is divided into four squares that are in fact 4 rooms. The first belongs to a do-it-yourselfer, who loves painting, the second belongs to a handyman who is perhaps the caretaker of the building and loves to watch Sci-Fi / space travel documentaries, the third belongs to a married couple and finally we have the room at the basement of the house where people do their laundry. And boy do many of these rooms need some fixing. Something is always broken really and that result in constant trouble and constant movement for everybody involved. But the ones suffering the most are the guys delivering a trampoline outside the house. This reference to things (television sets) falling down to the trampoline without going up again though was one of the more hilarious and wittier statements the film has to offer. If you think anything you saw in here was random, you are wrong. It may seem this way, but in fact it is all very well thought-through. The moment when only one of the TV sets would work was also really entertaining. A great deal about this one was about action and reaction.

The by far funniest moment was the first inclusion of the panda bear (outside television). If you've seen it, you know what I mean, also very much thanks to the TV scene I mentioned earlier. Him hanging there afterward stretches the joke a bit, but just because it is not as good as the first appearance doesn't mean it's bad. I think this little movie is a truly creative achievement and I applaud Geinaert and everybody else working on it for his talent. A bit of a shame the Oscars ignored it (or they ignored the Oscars) and he has never topped his success with future projects, but maybe it will happen in the future. I sure hope so. These 10 minutes here get a major thumbs-up for me and I highly recommend seeing this one. Cannes was right,this is a definite contender for best short film of 2004, animated or not animated. To sum it all up, the strength here is that the director managed the perfect balance between one quarter of the screen standing out, but the other ones still being interesting enough not to ignore, which means this film is also certainly worth to be seen far more than once. It does not get worse on repeated viewings. Check it out now.

Wonderful!

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 9 September 2009]

While the artwork in this animated short isn't particularly stunning because it's so "normal", there is nothing normal about this film. It's wonderful from start to finish and proves you DON'T need computer generated animation or artsy techniques to make a great animated film.

The film consists of dividing the screen into four equally sized segments. In each, lives a different resident of an apartment complex and, oddly, you can see into their homes like the walls are invisible. So, simultaneously, you see four separate stories, of sorts, and it makes for fascinating viewing. At times, some of the residents are doing very little but more often than not, what happens in one apartment affects some of the other residents. For example, when one guy nails up a picture, the guy in the apartment below begins banging the ceiling with his broom. Additionally, and very oddly, when the guy in one flat watches a TV and the picture goes out, he hits it and the picture in one of the other apartments then goes out!! So, it's all a series of bizarre chain reactions and after a while it gets really, really chaotic and funny--showing that the film has a great and well-crafted story.

Clever!!

seriously funny stuff

[myriamlenys · 8/10 · 13 March 2018]

What can I say, other than "watch it and laugh" ? This animation short about life in adjacent apartment flats was made by a student, which means that it still shows some signs of inexperience. However, it is quite as funny as works made by far older and far more experienced artists.

Since the appearance of "Flatlife" a lot of water has flowed through the Scheldt. Jonas Geirnaert, the maker of this promising animation short, has gone on to fame (and, hopefully, fortune) as an all-round artist : comedian, presenter, writer of screenplays, voice artist, and so on. To stick to the animation work : among other things, he is the creator of "Kabouter Wesley", a foul-mouthed gnome evolving in a fairytale world which contains - to quote but one example - larcenous dolphins with speech impediments. (I can't say that I'm too fond of the "Kabouter Wesley" cartoons or animation shorts, but there's no denying their cleverness and invention.)

"Flatlife" already shows one of the hallmarks of Geirnaert's style : an apparent simplicity that hides a great deal of intelligence and sophistication. Moreover, Geirnaert possesses an admirable sense of comic timing.