His Passionate Bride (2004) User Reviews

Frivolous, feminine, flirty fun

[farweltered88 · 7/10 · 1 January 2006]

This short has many droll and raunchy scenes that are kind of saucy and slightly arousing - bravo!

The animation itself, being primitive but still quite visceral, suits the larger-than-life narrative perfectly. Barber's posh-totty voice-acting also seems imperfectly apposite here.

I would guess the writer bashed this zany, distinctly-unBritish and decidedly female tale of rutting, racing and requited love out after few bottles of red wine and packets of viagra, and what comes across is that the production team probably had a really mega-good laugh making this film. More please.

Crude in more than one sense but has a certain humour to it

[bob the moo · 4 December 2004]

Adrian Savage will have to marry if he wants to inherit his father's estate and he plans to marry Lola. However Lola loves Russell – a man she met in a night of passion who went off to become a war photographer where he was shot and lost a leg. When the two meet at the engagement party, Lola remembers how much she cares for him – but now Russell has a mistress (Elizabeth) who jealously spies Lola's flickering of lust.

The animation in this short film is very rough and ready – certainly the casual viewer might not be that impressed by the rough backgrounds and very rough characters. I must admit it did take me a few seconds to get over the fact that it looked ugly and I never really got to appreciate the work put into it because the style did nothing for me. What did make me watch was the rather funny twist on a sweeping romance in the old shirt-ripping style of old, albeit it spruced up with modern touches.

The modern touches mean that the whole thing is delivered with a great tongue in cheek narration from Frances Barber who totally gets the joke and her delivery is a big part of it working. The plot involves quite a lot of sex and I was surprised to see it depicted in a non-graphic manner that left no doubt about what you were seeing; especially when this was shown at 8pm in the evening on terrestrial television. However it did make me laugh at least once and then keep me amused for the rest of the time.

Overall not the most beautiful animated short you'll ever see but it has a nice dry wit to it that makes up for the rather crude air it has to match the ugly animation. Part of the annual Animator In Residence (AIR) programme.