Short Stop: The Family Portrait is a stop-motion master-class

 The newspaper's headline tells of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and says that war may be coming. The world is on the precipice of collapse. And so is the house that serves as our setting in Lea Vidakovic's incredible short, The Family Portrait. The house, and the various characters inside, some of whom live there, some of whom are visiting, one who's working (the maid), and some that are animals (ever multiplying, seemingly), feel like a microcosm of the world outside, the chaos that's brewing, the violence, the pain.

There's such an intense feeling of decay that permeates this short, which is rendered in absolutely jaw-dropping stop-motion. The wallpaper is dripping, peeling. Furniture keeps getting knocked over. the floors are creaking, collapsing. The structure that should be a source of safety and comfort is anything but. It feels alive, on fire, dangerous. And there are so many people gathered there, so many that some of them feel like they appear out of nowhere at the end, when they all finally gather in one place. Were there always so many? Who are they all to each other?

God, watching this just made me want to know more. There are so many incredible details, so many moments that make you lean in and wonder why. I could spend hours in this world, in this house, amongst these people, watching their little moments and movements, many mundane, even the more exciting ones pretty commonplace. A quick fuck in the hallway. Reading the newspaper. Sneaking a bite of dessert. It's amazing how such small moments can capture your imagination when they're executed like they are here. There's no dialogue. We don't know who most of these people are to each other. But we care. We're intensely interested. We want more.

And the sound! There's a silence that hangs over the house that feels so oppressive, but also so fragile. It weighs on the proceedings even as it is constantly broken. Clanks and clunks and ringing and a violin, animal noises, a flipped table. The most intense, the ones that made my skin crawl, are the wet noises, which really take the spotlight (or the aural equivalent of a spotlight) in a brilliantly edited bit involving sex, cake, and a frog (not all together, thank goodness). The sound work here is extraordinary, truly a master class.

As is the animation, which is some of the most gorgeous I've seen this year. The details are astounding. So many textures -- the lace of the maid's leggings, the weave of the rug, the silky blankets, the moist mound of a slice of cake. The characters don't emote much, but they feel all the realer for that. It feels like they're already hollowed out from the horrors that are coming their way, by the danger that surrounds them. And the animals deserve a special shout-out, especially the dog who has such a derpy-looking head, just adorable.

With so much (literally everything) left unsaid, with characters who we can't get too close to -- even as we want to, with such an enigmatic tone to the whole thing, it's really amazing how perfectly The Family Portrait Lands. I think, more than anything, it's an exercise in atmosphere, and everything is so perfectly aligned in achieving this incredible atmosphere, in making this setting feel so lived-in, so dreadful, that everything else for the viewer feels taken care of. It's one of those films where I just knew I was in capable hands, watching the work of someone who knew exactly what they were doing. The care, the skill, the craft is so tangible, so tactile, so present (almost crushingly so), I felt a weird bliss. Maybe because I was on the outside looking in, free from the house of horrors, but still getting to behold it.