VERDICT: Mirjana Balogh’s affirming animation finds solace in a dystopian future where ending a relationship requires the physical swapping of a body part.
Lost love really leaves a scar in Mirjana Balogh’s reflective sci-fi short, Wish You Were Ear.
This is not just from the emotional slings and arrows of the heart, but literal transformations that see the body littered with permanent reminders of past relationships. In the world Balogh has so deftly conceived, when two people go through a break-up, they must choose a body part to swap with the other. They will each now carry a physical reminder of the of these past dalliances forever. Balogh’s diploma film from Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design tells the story of one individual’s reckoning with this bodily history and screens in the student film competition in Sarajevo having scooped the coveted Crystal Bear at this year’s Berlinale.
The protagonist of the Wish You Were Ear goes unnamed, but the audience sees them struggling to be intimate with a lover – evidently uncomfortable with their body despite their partner’s reassurances. This comes between the two and they split up, trading their left ear in the process. With no dialogue and an abstracted and colourful animation style, the precise reason for the discomfort remains ambiguous, but the film’s conceits blends notions of physical self-consciousness with similar feelings about their sexual and romantic past. In this world, people’s failures in love are not just internalised trauma but must be worn openly.
What is evident in the sharp delineations between body parts on the protagonist, is their personal shame and inability to love themselves for all that they have been and done. Other characters have smooth gradient transitions between their own skin and the differently coloured arm or nose they might be wearing. In following her protagonist through their journey to a greater degree of self-acceptance, Balogh has made a quietly profound short that is both visually and emotionally arresting.
Director, screenplay, design: Mirjana Balogh
Producer: Jozsef Fulop
Editing: Judit Czako
Music, sound: Jizsef Iszlai
Animation supervision: Kitti Teleki, Mirjana Balogh Production company: Moholy-Nage University of Art and Design (Hungary)
Venue: Sarajevo Film Festival (Competition – Student Film) No dialogue 11 minutes
Read more of our short film coverage over at Verdict Shorts
