Shannon Sawyer, Cartoons Underground’s guest author, reviews Home Sweet Home, an animated short by Pierre Clenet, Alejandro Diaz, Romain Mazevet and Stéphane Paccola.
Home Sweet Home is a CGI animated short film created in 2013 by Pierre Clenet, Alejandro Diaz, Romain Mazevet and Stéphane Paccola. The film follows the adventures of a sentient house as they travel across the country in classic take on what it means to go on a journey while still conveying the emotions of the characters.
Because the houses are the main characters and dialogue non-existent the audience forced to focus on the visual storytelling rather than any banter or exposition, stripping the film down to its visuals, sound, and music. Even with such limitations on animating the characters the houses all have their personality in the details of their structure and are highly expressive to convey their feelings on the events at hand.
The setting of the film has a post-apocalyptic vibrancy to it with isolation being so encompassing that the other houses the main character meets are far and few in-between. When the blue house does meet a much older one it no longer forces the narrative to be about isolation, but about the company and care that is developed for someone to share in that loneliness. The film’s end shows that the journey can become one about survival and that we will lose loved ones but must still carry on with their memories.
Home Sweet Home is a beautifully animated film that calls out to the solitude we embrace that comes with traveling away from home and the experience and sacrifices that life will bring to our doorstep.
Watch ‘Home Sweet Home‘ in the following video:
