In the end, the woman is alone, with a hole in her belly where the man had been. © 2001.

The Metaphor
As with most films that are produced with great attention to design, Un Jour is an easy film to watch -- there is a certain amount of humor regarding a little guy sticking out of someone's belly -- but what does it mean? The situation is a metaphor, but for what? Perhaps a clue is given during the end credits when the woman informs us that later, other men entered her belly but were either too fat, too thin, too tall or too short. Is the hole representative of the void that remains when a relationship ends? Are boyfriends just "little men" trying to remain in the womb? About half way through the film we meet another woman across the hall who has a more boisterous womb-mate: that guy drinks too much and has a terrible temper. Our lady of the perpendicular man sees the couple and thinks that perhaps her relationship is not so bad. Is this a case of someone learning to live with her less-than-perfect partner?

Moreover, the film has a sort of resignedness to it...a man comes, stays, then leaves. We wake up one day and, unexpectedly, someone enters our life. We cannot help but invite them in. We change to accommodate them and then, when they are gone, we are left with a void, wondering what we did the day before they came. The film chronicles this cycle in a matter-of-fact way, so simply that as we gaze through our character to the window that she is standing in front of, we cannot help but feel her sadness.

Don Perro is an animator and designer currently coordinating the Commercial Animation Program at Capilano College in North Vancouver, Canada. He has made one experimental film in his life: a frame by frame tour of his 1977 KZ 650 motorcycle using a macro lens, one inch from the bike. It was never shown to anyone.