A woman with possibly the world's worst job searches desperately for a secret admirer in Lavatory Lovestory. © Melnitsa Animation Studio.

Lavatory Lovestory
In sharp contrast to Amos Klein's story is Lavatory Lovestory, a lighthearted tale of yearning and romance... in the bathroom.

Is there any job less fulfilling than that of a bathroom attendant? Sure, you can make a list, but it's probably a short one, and the heroine of our story will readily agree that she hasn't made the best of career decisions. She sits in a small tollbooth every day as men come and go through the turnstile, depositing coins in her jar as they hurry to and from the coin-op restroom. Our lonely bathroom attendant occasionally gets to leave her small enclosure so that she can mop the men's room floor, but her day consists primarily of staring blankly at passersby and reading the newspaper while dreaming of a better, more romantic life.

One afternoon, while she has her nose buried in the newspaper, a secret admirer leaves a bouquet of flowers in the coin jar, providing a welcome distraction from the drudgery of her job. A fruitless search for the secret Romeo leaves her as dejected and depressed as before, possibly even more so. More flowers arrive, day by day, and only the perseverance that comes with one of the world's worst jobs allows her to see her mission through to its conclusion.

Director Konstantin Bronzit's film has wit, charm and style, which bolstered its ability to garner its Oscar nomination. The character designs wouldn't look out of place in a typical issue of The New Yorker, and the story is so engaging that the viewer is at no point disturbed by the fact that all of the action is taking place in the men's room and its adjacent hallway, which is quite an accomplishment in itself.

The owner of La maison en petits cubes explores the depths of his underwater home after he drops his pipe through a hole in the floor. © 2008 Robot Communications, Inc.

La maison en petits cubes (The house of small cubes or Tsumiki no ie)
"An old man looks back on his past" is a very common storytelling trope. So common, in fact that it's already turned up once in this month's "FFF" and here it is again, already. Done poorly, this type of story becomes a tedious cliché, but done well...it's magic.

La maison en petits cubes opens as an old man in his small, dingy home opens a strange door in the middle of his floor, picks up a fishing rod, and casts his line down the hole. As his story unfolds, we find that his home is one of the few visible for miles around in the midst of a large, endless sea. One morning, he awakens to find that the surrounding waters have risen again, and, completely unfazed by this, he ascends to the roof and begins building a new home on top of his current residence. While attending to this work, the old man accidentally drops his pipe through the open hole in his floor, and watches helplessly as it drifts away. To retrieve the pipe, he rents a scuba outfit and explores the depths of his home along the way.

We soon discover that the rising tide has affected the old man's home before -- many, many times before. He descends level by level, pausing to reflect on the furniture and other effects that he'd abandoned over the years, and reminiscing about days gone by and absent friends. It's a very sweet story, and is sentimental but never saccharine.

It's a beautiful film, with beautiful illustrations by director Kunio Kato and a lovely score by Kenji Kondo. All of the artwork, including the backgrounds, is hand-drawn, and the animation was assembled very simply, using Photoshop and After Effects. The end results are extraordinary, and it's easy to see why this film received its Oscar nomination.