Title: Death of the Fish
Foreign Title: La Mort du Poisson
Year: 2025
Country: France
Language: No Dialogue
Director: Eva Lusbaronian
A quote often attributed to Victor Hugo says “Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent”; the music and choreography in this film demonstrates how dance and movement work together to express emotions which otherwise are impossible to articulate.
The location for this poignant, animated short is set by an idyllic lakeside near a family vacation home. The opening scene finds a young teenage girl noticing an empty garden chair under an umbrella by the lake. Searching, she finds her mother lying with closed eyes, in a bed of roses. Her worse fear causes her to open her mother’s eyelids, checking to see if she is alive.
The Mother’s grief is unrelenting and unresolvable. Any death, even that of plants and flowers, triggers painful memories. She performs a nightly ritual where she buries the bodies of the dead things she has found ( the fish) in a circle which also includes the gravestone of her lost one. She is followed by a chorus of veiled mourners, who are shades of herself and who never leave her.
The communication between mother and daughter is only through the movement of contemporary dance. The inconsolable sorrow witnessed by the young daughter leaves her intertwined with her mother as she tries to alleviate her mother’s sorrow, through the “pas de deux” of the dance.
The artwork in the animation is beautiful. The music is sobering and gentle. A palpable sense of despair is conveyed through the evocative dance movements. The exquisite dance moves are thanks to a collaboration with the Tanztheatre Wuppertal, a contemporary dance company founded by Pina Bausch ( 2011 VIFF screened a Wim Wenders Documentary “Pina”)
It takes the focussed blend of the technical skill and artistic vision of the Director and animator, Eva Lusbaronian, to knit together all these threads; artistry in the graphics, the perfectly attuned music score ( Pablo Pico), the touching screenplay and the fabulously choreographic movements.
There are no miss-steps here.
