Short Stop: Where Rabbits Come From is a befuddling beauty

Rendered (mostly) in beautiful black-and-white, and backed by a lovely and affecting score, the Oscar-qualified animated short Where Rabbits Come From is a curious thing. Hailing from Studio Niloc and writer-director Colin Ludvic Racicot, the film has been making a lot of noise at festivals around the world, winning prizes and acclaim, and I'm sure inspiring some tears. 

We find ourselves in a bleak, gray city, a dystopian world populated by animals who keep their heads down and lead meager lives, trying to stay under the radar of the stormtrooper-like authorities. A rabbit father and his young daughter are the stars of the show, reeling from the disappearance of their wife/mother, eager to find answers, and a little magic along the way. 

The story has a clever twist I won't reveal here, one that arrives with color and flair. But the story is overall a kind of odd one. It's like if Presto was directed by Ari Folman. So, yeah, it's pretty bleak. 

While I didn't fully engage with what was happening, I certainly enjoyed the experience of watching this. The animation is really, really beautiful, with a smart array of color palettes, each effectively employed. Sylvain Chomet is a mentor to Racicot, and it shows. Chomet's collaborator from The Triplets of Belleville, Benoit Charest, provides the score, which does a nice job of shaping and enhancing the emotion without being too heavy-handed. It's gentle, feeling work, probably my favorite part of the short. 

I imagine others might get more of an emotional wallop from the ending, which is very sweet, but I was so befuddled by the overall vision of the short that I was kind of just like...okay, sure. So it goes. 

The Oscar shortlists come out on Tuesday, December 17, so we'll see if Where Rabbits Come From makes the cut then. In the meantime, I'll cover more shorts in the months to come as they vie for Oscar glory (or just to entertain viewers).