My robot friend: The emotional fireworks of the end of 2023 (review)
The director of the masterful Blancanieves is happily trying his hand at animated film. A joy of every moment for young and old.
Images, sounds and music. Pablo Berger’s cinema blithely dispenses with words. He had proven it with Blancanievesbreathtaking rereading of Snow White. He confirms it with My robot friendadaptation of Robot dreams, Sara Varon’s graphic novel, her first foray into animation. Images, sounds and music… and not a single dialogue to tell the story of a friendship between a dog and a robot that he commanded to break with the loneliness that weighed on him in the New York of the years 80. You will not see more sensitive, more joyful and more heartbreaking at the end of 2023. By following the (mis)adventures of this dog forced to abandon his robot – turned off after having taken a dip in the ocean – on a beach which closes its doors that same evening until the following summer, Berger succeeds in everything. The growing strength of the bond between the two friends, the suddenness of their separation, the cartoonish strategies imagined by the dog to enter this beach and remove his robot, the forced mourning of their friendship, the way in which the passage of time weakens the feelings that we thought were the most solid. All with animation as clear and elegant as its story, never seeking to target this or that audience, child or adult. And if he multiplies the nods to the seventh art (Pierre Etaix, Big LebowskiBuster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz…), he never seems crushed by those he admires as he firmly holds the reins of his story and his endearing characters who are difficult to leave behind. A tour de force.
By Pablo Berger. Animation. Duration: 1h41. Released December 27, 2023
