“The girl who cried pearls”: a love letter to Montreal in stop motion

On the occasion of its presentation at Cinemania, The girl who cried pearlsfrom the Montreal duo Clyde Henry Productions (Maciek Szczerbowski and Chris Lavis), reminds us that frame-by-frame animation is as much about asceticism as it is about enchantment. Maciek Szczerbowski readily speaks of a “Frankenstein complex” specific to the profession: “At one point, I understood that, if I persisted shot by shot, I could finish a film. It’s 24 shots to a second, the slowest, most laborious way to imagine a film… Essentially, you’re manipulating reality: you’re bringing it to life out of nothing, you’re constantly forcing something into existence when naturally it wouldn’t. » In this definition lies the entire ethics of the project: a stubborn belief in the power of the artisanal gesture, capable of making the impossible credible.

The “Frankenstein complex”, or the total workshop

Long-time companions, the co-directors founded a small workshop in 1997 with a simple ambition: “to have a life in the arts”. From this daily practice is born an imaginary third party – Clyde Henry – who signs their works. “Through dialogue and debate, we find a voice that is neither ours nor mine. In the end, it’s impossible to tell who did what. » This common voice is embodied in a very concrete materiality. Two “families” of puppets punctuate time: the present (painted silicone, glass eyes, computer-generated mouths) and the past (figures in “sculpted wood” style, frozen faces painted in oil, inspired by religious icons seen even in the Notre-Dame basilica). The decor follows the same meticulous logic: more than a dozen locations, thousands of hand-patinated props, costumes sewn to scale by Yso South. “Part of the fascination comes from the control over every aspect of the film that a “classic” director does not have. Scorsese doesn’t have his fingerprints on every inch of the set. We do. Everything is made by our hands. »

This material care is matched by optical writing that is clearly physical: for sequences from the past, the filmmakers heat Plexiglas plates, coat certain filters with vaseline, look for aberrations in the camera. The result, says Maciek Szczerbowski, is a “blur of memory”: clear center, edges that dissolve, as in a memory of which we keep the essentials and whose peripheries are lost.

Light extends this principle, by being diffuse for the past; harder and more directional for today’s Paris and Montreal. The filmmaker explains that motion control supports are adjusted to allow a “human hand” to pass through, far from too smooth fluidity. In stop motiontime does not obey: “If nothing goes wrong, a whole day produces maybe three seconds of film… and it’s rare that nothing goes wrong. » It took four and a half years, until Patrick Watson’s score, “which gave so much meaning and romanticism that all this time was worth it”.

If we had to say how this fable stands up, it would be through the coherence between the idea, the hand and the material. With Clyde Henry, everything comes from the same breath: the choice of an original version in French, the puppets in two “families” which materialize time; the obstinacy to obtain the effects in the camera so that the memory retains its halo. The light, diffuse yesterday and sharp today, tells the story of the era even before the plot names it. At the workshop, Szczerbowski and Lavis also pass on this knowledge to new generations of animators, reminding us that animation is not only a skill, but a transfer of enchantment: bringing into existence, image after image, what did not exist.

Montreal, lively setting and intimate mythology

Produced by the NFB, The girl who cried pearls anchors itself at the turn of the XX^e century in Montreal and tells of the meeting of a poor boy and a young girl whose tears turn into pearls. Thought and developed in French, the film asserts its Montreal-ness. “We had to admit that the story took place here, in Montreal, and in French. We were not born here: we chose this city, we are raising our children there. At one point, we talked about the film as a love letter to Montreal. The streets of this city retain a mysterious magic for us. » The letter can also be read in the documentary texture: old pages from the Duty, miniaturized in wallpaper, appear near the heroine’s window, an echo of the modest interiors where people once isolated themselves with newspapers; the detail “localizes” the decor and gives it a soul.

The story, more classic for Clyde Henry than usual, assumes a clear architecture. “This is the first time that a fully developed scenario, a structure of acts, carries the whole. Paradoxically, attempting a traditional story was, for us, more experimental. » Nothing, however, is closed off: “We want to leave something open. I have never heard a “wrong” interpretation. At some point, the author becomes unreliable: when you are too close, you are no longer the authority. If the object is credible enough, we let it go; if it touches someone, it becomes theirs, like a song. »

There remains the conviction that the stop motion makes the impossible credible. “The object exists in three dimensions: this mode of expression allows us to tell something fantastic and make people believe in it. »

Winner of an award at TIFF, which qualifies the film for the Oscar race in the short category, the film continues its festival trajectory and makes its Montreal premiere in the official short competition at Cinemania, returning to its point of origin: “Showing the film to our city as part of Cinemania is a special privilege. Happy to introduce it to the people who also live in these mysterious and magnificent streets. »