Pink Asparagus

5/5

Courtesy of TIFF.

This year I’ll be reviewing only my favourites.🌪 From the 24 films I watched, this is one of my TOP 4 movies @ TIFF.

Pablo Berger and Sara Varon’s Robot Dreams is an extremely moving and emotionally complex animated silent film about the relationship between a dog and his companion robot. I didn’t read any reviews before seeing this, but heard whispers around the festival that it was especially good. Here’s the premise: Dog is lonely in Manhattan, and solves this by ordering a companion robot from the shopping channel. The pair are then attached at the hip- everything is better when they’re together. One night, Dog needs to abandon Robot at the beach and the rest of the film explores the psychological aftermath of this for both characters. I didn’t expect to get choked up multiple times during this, but I did and it was very complicated. The movie can get quite sad, but it can also be very uplifting. Here are some things I really liked:

Robot Dreams is incredibly inventive. I was delightfully surprised several times when an already imaginative cartoon New York would exceed my expectations. In one of my favourite scenes, dog is on the losing end of an aggressive bowling match. His teammate, a giant snowman, plops his own head off of his shoulders and into his hands, and uses it as a bowling ball. Snowman wins them the game, which would be uplifting but is instead complicated as it arises feelings in Dog about his former relationship with Robot. This movie reminds us that any elation we get from exciting activities can quickly shift into remembering difficult feelings we’d buried from before.

Robot Dreams will really move you. This movie is able to do fan service in a way where you won’t always get what you’re rooting for, but you’ll calmly be convinced to consider the alternative. This movie explores what it means for time to pass, for people to change and for the city to move. It confronts the necessity of letting go and moving on through music and glances and mime.

Robot Dreams will surprise you. Never did I expect the afternoon weekday screening of a silent cartoon film that I hadn’t heard much about to be one of my favourites at the festival. Yet here I am, passionately recommending it. It’s worth it. See it.