Short Stop: Percebes allows us to start to understand

Percebes, we're told, has two meanings, both of which are the concern of Alexandra Ramires and Laura Gonçalves's Oscar-shortlisted animated short. It refers to the goose barnacles that grow off the coast of Algarve, Portugal's southernmost region. But it also means "understand," and this short gives us a look at the life cycle of the percebes, and also to find a deeper, symbolic meaning that applies to the region and its residents at large.

I love how this movie looks. It's like a sketchbook come to life. A limited color palette, mostly warm oranges and faint blues, with occasional flashes of a more vibrant, violent red. Often to animate the tendrils and meat of the percebes as they cling to their rocks, get harvested, get sold and cooked and eaten, and also manifest in more dreamlike, alien ways. These are strange-looking creatures, ones that are described in a myriad of ways by the denizens of this short. My favorite is that they're the fingernails on rocky digits. To us outsiders, they also might recalls horror creatures like the Demogorgon from Stranger Things. It almost feels dangerous to look at, much less eat.

And that's a major part of what this film grapples with. The citizens of Algarve talk about the scourge of tourism on their lives. The way that tourists come in and bring life to the city, but thereby prevent the residents from really enjoying it. Instead, they have to be working the restaurants, fishing, doing all the other jobs that make it such a destination. These tourists come in and dominate the beautiful summer days, but then often turn their noses up at the percebes, thinking they look gross, weird, something they definitely don't want to eat. They don't know that within those strange little creatures is delicious meat that tastes like the sea. They put up walls that don't allow them to understand, to only allow in what is familiar and attractive, to keep the local culture at arm's length. 

Meanwhile, the residents don't get to breathe until the colder winter months send those tourists away. They, like the percebes, are sturdy, standing up to any weather, always present, always there. It's a potent bit of symbolism that feels well-earned by the time the credits roll. The film invites us in to look at this world, to try to understand, while knowing we probably still won't, maybe never will.

As for me, if I ever get this part of Portugal, I'll gladly try percebes. And I'll eat it with an open mind.