A young boy learns a mother's love.
FELT LOVE is used with permission from Arlene Bongco and Angeline Vu. Learn more at / feltlove_film .
Bo is a young boy whose mother, Yue, works as a seamstress out of their home to make a living. Yue works hard, but his mother is often too busy working hard to make a living. Bored, Bo stays near his mother. But true to his childish nature, he's fidgety, soon falling over in his chair and distracting his mother from her work.
She banishes Bo from her workroom and tries to go back to work in peace. But she feels terrible about her difficult moment with Bo, crying onto the fabric of the shirt she is sewing. But at her lowest point, she and Bo manage to find their way back to one another and reach a shared understanding.
Directed by Arlene Bongco and Angeline Vu, who led a team of students at San Jose State in the animation, this touching animated short explores the bond between a mother and a son, even when challenged by the demands of working and making a living. Told without dialogue, it focuses on the small hurts and conflicts that any family can understand, exploring how working through them can bring us closer to our loved ones.
Combining cozily lived-in live-action backgrounds with 2-D line animation, there's a pleasing sense of texture and warmth in this domestic world, but it's also cluttered with the work that Yue must do to provide for her son. The tension between the obligations of work and family structure the conflict, which is gently handled in the storytelling. It sets up Bo's desire to connect with his mother, and he's drawn with an evocative simplicity that communicates his innocence and hopefulness and animated with movements that convey his eager but awkward energy. But with the bags under her eyes and her worn-out expression, it also tracks the mother's exhaustion, saddled down with duty and obligation.
Bo and Yue's conflict is simple and intimate, boiling down to a child wanting attention and a parent brushing them aside. But coupled with the clear, concise storytelling and a tender, moving musical score, it has a resonance that's no less powerful for its relatability. Almost any child (or anyone who has been a child) can relate to being pushed aside for something else, and almost any parent can relate to being at the point of exhaustion and doing or saying something they regret to their child.
But Bo and Yue find a way past the conflict, through their love for one another -- which gives each other grace when life is hard and sympathy when we need it when we're low. Many times we feel love for our family members, but we take for granted that it needs to be expressed. FELT LOVE is about making those feelings palpable, and letting them be shared between people.
5 окт 2024
