My Love (2006)

Overrated

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

This is a Russian animated short film that runs for slightly under half an hour and was made by Aleksandr Petrov almost 10 years ago, so far his last work of a director. Petrov has been pretty successful with the Academy. He made 6 animated films. 4 of them got an Academy Award nomination and one of these got the win, all in the animated short film category. However, this one here did not win and I am not really mad about it. The animation style I am not the biggest fan of, although it's okay and not the biggest weakness of the film. The biggest weakness may be that it just throws crucial story points out there and does not properly elaborate on these, such as the artificial eye or the man that the young woman is supposed to marry. Or even the general idea of a teenage boy with 2 love interests, which is a good one, but I felt they did not really make the most of this premise. I am not sure if that is Petrov's fault or the fault of Ivan Shmelyov. The latter, by the way is credited as being responsible for the screenplay, which is not true. He wrote the piece that this is based on, but was long dead when Petrov made this one here. Maybe it helps to understand this short film if you have read Shmelyov's work, but this should not be a requirement. All in all, not recommended.

This is an animated short by Aleksandr Petrov using the technique of paint-on-glass, where the image is painted directly on sheets of glass. There will be spoilers ahead:This is an adaptation of a work by Ivan Shmelyov, A Love Story. It's the story of a 16 year old boy, the son of a wealthy family, studying for his exams and wrestling with puppy love, which has hit him twice at once, first with Pasha, the family's maid and then the mysterious woman living nearby.Though his interest in the maid is largely returned, his interest in the other older woman has a more uneven pattern to it. Both loves are ultimately doomed and not just because he's 16. Sons of wealth marrying the family maid was all but unheard of at that time and place, for one thing. As for his other interest, she has a past and a reputation, along with a complicated present.The plot is interesting, but unless you can find something with subtitles or speak Russian, the plot is hard to follow. Subtitled copies can be found, but the animation itself is so breathtaking that one can appreciate this for the visuals alone. I've been fortunate enough to see this with English subtitles.There's angst, tragedy, laughter and joy throughout and it's very well crafted. This can be seen online and is most highly recommended.

Words are just not enough to express how marvelous this short is. Each one of the animations directed by Aleksandr Petrov is a flawless and exquisite work of art. He always manage to turn even the most (apparently) mundane story into something incredibly beautiful and poetical, and this short film about the contrast between passion and true love isn't exception. I simply loved every single second from "My Love": After seeing some bland, commercial and ugly animated films and television shows, this was a strong reminder of why I love so much this underrated genre, which is sadly commonly dismissed as something that only kids could enjoy, despite the existence of extraordinary films like this one. Personally, I would recommend this short to anyone.10/10 (And I would rate it with eleven stars if I could)

You know that you've become an animation buff when the mere mention of Aleksandr Petrov makes your heartbeat quicken in anticipation. Along with fellow genius Yuriy Norshteyn, he has become one of my favourite Russian animators, and such impressive short films as 'Korova (1989)' and 'The Old Man and the Sea (1999)' rank among my favourites. 'My Love (2006),' Petrov's latest film, was his fourth to be nominated for Best Animated Short at the Oscars, and, though it lost to Suzie Templeton's 'Peter & the Wolf (2006),' it certainly is one of the year's finest releases in any medium. Generally well-received by critics, 'My Love' has nonetheless stirred a few incidents of controversy, including comments from Chris Robinson – head of the Ottawa International Animation Festival – who apparently took offence to Petrov's pursuit of realism. Likewise, other leading animators, including Norshteyn himself, remarked that perhaps the film was too focused on technology rather than storytelling.The plot is based on "A Love Story," a 1927 novel by Ivan Shmelyov, and concerns a 16-year-old boy, Antosha, who is searching for his first true love. As he falls in and out of his romantic fantasies, Antosha must decide between two young woman who have captured his fancy – a pretty, innocent but uneducated parlourmaid named Pasha, and an experienced upper-class lady named Serafima. He is equally smitten with both lovers, but his inability to choose between them will prove tragic. Pasha is genuinely affectionate towards Antosha, but class restrictions prevent them from coming together without a certain hesitation; on the other hand, Antosha worships Serafima as a "goddess," considering her representative of his lover ideal. When experience reveals a fatal blemish in his idealistic illusions, the young boy rejects the older woman, but not before his indecision has cost him the girl that he truly loved.'My Love' often treads a fine line of comprehensibility – I'm not even certain that my description so far is completely accurate – but it's really the visuals that you should be watching out for. Petrov's style of paint-on-glass animation is instantly recognisable, and has all the beauty of a moving Impressionistic painting, the oils and colours shifting smoothly like the quiet waves of an ocean. Though, in order to achieve a sense of "romantic realism," Petrov has produced about 20% of the film using a kind of rotoscoping, he just as frequently descends into fantastic flights of the imagination. Antosha's inner romantic turmoil is represented through beautiful and sometimes terrifying daydreams – rowboats on a pond, ships amid a lightning storm, bodies burning in the pits of Hell – and Petrov's constantly-shifting style of animation is perfect for evoking the timelessness of our dreams and memories.