Living in a house suspended precariously from an icy cliffside, a father and son live a lonely but content life in João Gonzalez’s hand-drawn animation, Ice Merchants. Each day, the two of them – faces buried in chunky turtlenecks – leap from their vertiginous home for an exhilarating skydive to sell their ice in the village on the ground far below. Despite featuring no dialogue, the film explores both their affectionate relationship and their shared sense of loss in a moving film that bagged the top short film prize at the Le Semaine de la Critique awards in Cannes.
The visual style is beautiful, from the use of bold, contrasting colour blocks to the way that the line drawings are able to convey the rippling effect of wind resistance as the characters plummet from their veranda-cum-diving board. Equally vibrant is the dance of the two hats that, during every jump, are whipped off the characters’ heads and whirl and play in the air. The uneven and freehand lines also give their house a homemade and ramshackle impression that is initially charming, but which then takes on a perilous edge when its sturdiness becomes paramount towards the film’s end. The use of pale and darker oranges to illuminate the house vividly captures what would be a unique and stark quality of light in its unsheltered position. The colour-coding of father and son’s jumpers and hats – father in red, son in brown – suits the aesthetic as well as eventually taking on specific significance. Elsewhere, a yellow mug comes to stand for the mother who is, lamentably, missing from the narrative entirely.
Ultimately, it is through its carefully woven emotional storytelling that Ice Merchants finds its deeper power. The strength of the bond between father and son is deftly portrayed and their communal grief, no longer painful but present as a lingering absence, only makes their dutiful and deliberate routine all the more vital. When their way of life is genuinely threatened, there is a tear-jerking revelation of surprising proportions that pulls certain narrative quirks and the film’s underlying emotional fragility together in an incredibly poignant way.
Director, screenplay, cinematography, editor: João Gonzalez
Producers: Bruno Caetano, Michaël Proença
Animation: João Gonzalez, Ala Nunu
Sound: Ed Trousseau, Ricardo Real, Joana Rodrigues
Music: João Gonzalez, Nuno Lobo
Production company: Cola Animation (Portugal), Wildstream (France)
Venue: Le Semaine de la Critique, Cannes (Short Film Competition)
No dialogue
14 minutes
