by Android or artificial intelligence aren’t the enemy in “Robot Dreams,” Pablo Berger’s gentle and charming fantasy about finding manufactured friendship in a scuzzy vision of 1980s New York City. In fact, take away from this portrait of an unhappy Big Apple populated only by anthropomorphic animals and sentient automatons, that the world might be a better place without humans. Like “Blancanieves,” a quiet, flamenco-styled spin on Snow White, Berger’s fourth feature eschews dialogue in favor of expressive, moody visual storytelling. In every other way, though, “Robot Dreams” is a significant left turn for the Spanish writer-director, starting with a brand-new medium for him: simple, sharply-lined, pastel-softened “BoJack Horseman”-style 2D animation. .”
The film’s aesthetic and wordless approach, however, are rooted in American author and illustrator Sara Varon’s 2007 graphic novel of the same name. While Varon’s work was primarily aimed at young readers, the audience for Berger’s film — which evokes nostalgia for the Reagan-era New York of rolling discos and boom boxes on the sidewalks — is a little more difficult to find. to find. It’s certainly clean enough for kids, with little of the snark or cynicism that drives hip-looking adult animation, although the condescending narrative and air of melancholy can be stir in small fry. Still, it is in odd niches, in between that cult items can flourish; Already well received at such festivals as Cannes and Annecy, “Robot Dreams” should build enough fans to create its own message for the lonely and the lonely: when it comes to love, the t – high quality in relation to the size.
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What kind of love, exactly, is the most surprising question in a story that suggests a closer companionship between its two male protagonists (although it is not certain), while they remain wholesome. (Since they are a dog and a mechanical robot, it’s hard to imagine how things could be otherwise.) Unnamed Protagonist A dog is introduced living a solitary life in the East Village, following a steady routine of work, walks and glumly microwaved TV dinners. — nobody minded, except the pigeons crowding around the window of his apartment. He’s a stoic soul, but everyone has a limit: One late night, inspired by an infomercial on his ever-blaring TV series, he orders a build-your-own-robot-packing kit, which is similarly promoted enough with a set of Ginsu steak knives.
Whatever it costs, it’s worth it. From the moment of assembly, the nameless robot is probably a very loving and responsive man, forever fixed on his canine owner with a metallic grin and wide perma eyes. It’s not much of a match, but then neither of them are Dogs. His summer days are spent sightseeing, sunbathing, eating hot dogs, skating through Central Park – pretty much experiencing Manhattan as Cole Porter described it years earlier, although the t -a special song by Earth, Wind and Fire “September.” That ever-elastic disco nugget sounds like montages of multiple friends in different moods and motions: Their bullying matches the early stages of their friendship, but gradually becomes an ironic counterpoint in the story of loss and subconscious desire.
For September comes, and with it, separation: After a day of gambling at Coney Island, the joints of the robot’s sea quickly rust, rendering it immobile. Unable to carry his friend home, and the beach subsequently closed for the winter, Dog must endure the winter alone – while the abandoned robot languishes and freezes in the cold, rogue predators preying on his parts . Only in multiple dream sequences (thus answering Philip K. Dick’s burning question about androids, though no electric sheep) can he attempt to reunite with Dogs. Spring Will Come, as in some ways will be the closing, although it’s fair to say that the unsurpassed joy of the film’s opening acts is never regained. Against Disney’s usual happy-ever-after endings, “Robot Dreams” embraces the very mature philosophy that one can have more than one soulmate in life, and that a relationship is not finite.
It’s a poignant arc that’s perhaps not strong enough to power a 100-minute feature given to rhythmic and narrative repetition. “Robot Dreams” wouldn’t have been nearly as effective or impactful as a short, though that format would have given the sheer volume of stunning visual gags Berger packs around his slim, slim story — many of them determined to the period (frozen food and advertising trends of the era coming in for a good ribbon) and the anything-goes street life of New York itself. Above all, Berger’s film revels in the kind of eccentric, incidental sights and sounds that dreams — human, animal, or android — can conjure up.
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