Though the plot of Même les pigeons vont au paradis (Even pigeons go to heaven) may sound like something out of a Bergman film, it is actually a very effective and well-staged comedy. © BUF Compagnie.

Même les pigeons vont au paradis (Even pigeons go to heaven)
The second Oscar-nominated short in this month’s "FFF" is Même les pigeons vont au paradis (Even pigeons go to heaven), a French film by director Samuel Tourneux that demonstrates that no good deed goes unpunished. No bad deed goes unpunished in this film, either, for that matter.

The story opens at a small church in the Normandy countryside as a priest makes use of some sort of celestial bandwith scanner to intercept signals from the great beyond. The priest outraces Death itself in his journey to the home of Monsieur Moulin, an aging recluse who’s not long for this world. He enters Moulin’s home and saves him from a potentially fatal fall, then launches an elaborate confidence scam with the intention of procuring Moulin’s life’s savings for the church by offering Moulin the opportunity to buy passage through the Gates of Heaven. The priest’s plan may very well succeed, too, if only he can escape the hand of Divine Intervention.

Though the plot may sound like something out of a Bergman film, Même les pigeons is a very effective and well-staged comedy. The writing is particularly sharp, and the story contains many subtle nuances that reward repeat viewings, given the nature of the plot and the manner in which the true motivations of each character are revealed.

The filmmakers cite “old French movies… Pixar’s works… and French comic authors like Régis Loisel, Lewis Trondheim, Manu Larcenet” among their influences, and the example of each shines through in this finely produced short. It’s easy to imagine Monsieur Moulin’s house exisiting just a brief train ride away from the Parisian kitchens seen in Ratatouille, and it’s not much of a stretch to see this as a graphic novella from the likes of Trondheim or Loisel, either. From the gritty country backroads to the radiant visions of Heaven, each scene is expertly crafted, and it’s easy to see why this film captured itself an Academy Award nomination.

The designs of The Pearce Sisters come together to create a wonderfully awful world of sickly colors, ugly characters and an absolutely miserable environment, but the cartoon itself is wonderful to behold. © Aardman Animations.

The Pearce Sisters
The Pearce Sisters is at times the most beautiful and most hideous film in this installment of "FFF." Aardman Animations, best known for its loveable stop-motion duo Wallace and Gromit, presents the exploits of a considerably less endearing pair, Lol and Edna Pearce, in this nine-minute short.

The Pearce Sisters inhabit a remote and desolate coast, far from any place that any sensible person would find himself if he had any say in the matter whatsoever. The weathered, well-worn sisters eke out a consistent, miserable existence from the sea, catching fish, gutting them, preparing them in a tiny smokehouse, and feeding the local seagull population a steady diet of discarded fish guts. The bleak and miserable weather consists of various combinations of cold, wind and rain, and the limited palette of the film (consisting of sickly yellowy-green, greeny-yellow, and unpleasant shades of brown) does an excellent job of conveying just how awful and terrible the Pearce Sisters’ home is.

A brief glimmer of hope enters their lives when the sisters discover a shipwrecked sailor and they nurse him back to health. Unfortunately for him, the nursing procedure includes a deranged makeover attempt for reasons unknown and unexplained, which ultimately leads to the sailor’s tragic, final fate. The sisters carry on, however, and console themselves with a tea party attended by all of the friends they’ve made during their time on the island. It’s a grotesque display, to be sure, but whatever the sisters’ lot in life, they seem resigned to it, and are surprisingly content, at that.

The beauty of the film comes from Aardman’s animation, supervised by director Luis Cook. The designs come together to create a wonderfully awful world of unsavory colors, ugly characters and an absolutely miserable environment, but the cartoon itself is wonderful to behold. The Pearce Sisters combines 2D and 3D animation, a first for Aardman, and the technique produces incredible results. The film was initially produced as 3D CGI animation, and each frame was then printed and drawn over by 2D artists, then scanned back into computers and composited over the 3D work, which the animators cite as « proof that 3D computers and 2D drawn animation can co-exist!” One can only wonder what the results would have been had Cook gone with his first choice, casting the Pearce Sisters as ugly men dressed as women in a live-action short, but it’s fortunate that we’ve got beautiful drawings of ugly women as a consolation prize.

Andrew Farago is the gallery manager and curator of San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum and the creator of the weekly online comic serial The Chronicles of William Bazillion.