Dir: Merwan Chabane
France, 2008, 17’
Original title: “Clichés de soirée”
Drawing on paper, 2D Computer
Prod: Onyx Films
“I don’t like parties.”
Nothing, not even her friend’s insistence, could make Sarah change her mind. Nothing, except perhaps the sexy and mysterious Edouard whose presence gets her, in the space of a few seconds, to go to the party she had decided to boycott.
Merwan Chabane
After studying animation and writing a thesis on comic book staging, Merwan Chabane created various storyboards for different media: animation series, the feature-length film “Lascars, Round Da Way” (Millimages), commercials for Orange and France Telecom, as well as developing and directing his own short films: “Biotope” (2002) and “Party Animals” (2008).
A comic book enthusiast, he has also worked on the drawings of “Les récits” by Carmen Travis (Delcourt) and he produced the first volume of “Pankat” (Vents d’Ouest).
“Party Animals” is an everyday mini-drama: it tells the setbacks and the disillusions of Sarah during a party to which she didn’t want to go. The desire was to show the inner turmoil that she is living without resorting to devices such as voice-over. Attitudes show ease or embarrassment; reactions to different situations show expectations or fears; contradictions and irritations underline emotional states.
The film is trying to show the violence that hits the uninitiated, plunged into a strange world, prone to one’s assumptions. This is the case of Sarah, who considers the parties as a place of renunciation, a place to let off steam where all mental activity is suspended. Held sway by this vision, she quickly finds herself in an awkward position in this place where she thought she would meet her prince charming, Edouard.
How does exclusion work? What are the conditions needed to fit in? And what do we have to compromise in order to belong? It is thanks to Sarah, lost in her contradictions, that I would like to ask these questions.
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