A new ani­mat­ed short explores sex­u­al envy from a female perspective

One of the first film fes­ti­vals to take place in cin­e­mas in the pan­dem­ic era was Portugal’s art­house fies­ta, IndieLis­boa. I attend­ed for five days search­ing for a film that would hyp­no­tise all of my sens­es. I knew from the begin­ning of Hun­gar­i­an ani­ma­tor Nad­ja Andrasev’s 12-minute short Sym­bio­sis that my search was over.

Open­ing with a woman hold­ing her breath at the bot­tom of a swim­ming pool as she watch­es oth­er bod­ies float past, it is immer­sive­ly sexy with a mood of estrange­ment that res­onates with how it feels to be a shy voyeur in the shad­ow of extro­verts. Andra­sev worked as sec­ond assis­tant direc­tor on Peter Strickland’s BDSM les­bian love sto­ry The Duke of Bur­gundy; the two films share a height­ened sen­su­al­i­ty and the same insect super­vi­sor, Tamás Németh.

Sym­bio­sis is about a woman named Sophie who dis­cov­ers that her hus­band is cheat­ing on her with mul­ti­ple mis­tress­es. She fol­lows him and col­lects memen­tos from these women which she takes home and adds to a secret shrine. The first comes about by chance: a straw­ber­ry blonde strand of hair tum­bles off her hus­band and Sophie impul­sive­ly tapes it into a scrap­book. Soon she is scav­eng­ing old sushi out of the trash, and receiv­ing a tat­too from a mis­tress who works in a tat­too parlour.

These stolen objects are alive with the ener­gy of the orig­i­nal own­er, so the fish lay­er of sushi becomes a vagi­na open­ing. ​“We need­ed her to col­lect dif­fer­ent sens­es,” Andra­sev tells me, ​“tac­tile things as well as audi­to­ry, like laugh­ter com­ing out of a per­fume bot­tle and her tast­ing things and smelling things.”

The source of the idea was Nadja’s per­son­al expe­ri­ence. ​“A few years ago I was at a par­ty and I looked around and realised that there were six women who I had some jeal­ousy issue with. Back then I was real­ly dis­tressed and had this iron­ic idea that they are my col­lec­tion of but­ter­flies. Over the years I came to a dif­fer­ent con­clu­sion and realised that I could still make this film but it doesn’t have to be so dark and pes­simistic. My per­son­al jour­ney is in the film.”

This jour­ney is a ref­er­ence to Sophie’s envy mor­ph­ing into an awe for the oth­er women, which scans almost like her dis­cov­er­ing les­bian ten­den­cies except that the man remains a source of con­nec­tion. ​“It was very impor­tant to me that the women are not por­trayed as neg­a­tive char­ac­ters and that she is becom­ing more attached to them.” says Andra­sev. ​“It’s a strange admi­ra­tion towards oth­er women that you can­not tell them because they are not real­ly your friends.”

I men­tion that I think a lot about how if you’ve had sex with one man then you are linked to all the oth­er women he’s had sex with. There are some women I would love to talk to and some­times I look them up online because we have this one con­nec­tion and I want us both to talk about a cer­tain man, but it will nev­er hap­pen. It turns out that Andra­sev has tak­en things a step fur­ther. ​“I have a size­able col­lec­tion of these women and about half of them are my friends now. It’s kind of like tam­ing your monsters.”

There is an ele­ment of objec­ti­fi­ca­tion, or at least phys­i­cal appre­ci­a­tion, in Andrasev’s depic­tion of these tamed mon­sters as they appear in the film. ​“You can start think­ing about a man’s per­spec­tive: appre­ci­at­ing sex­u­al­i­ty, beau­ty and the intel­li­gence and tal­ent of oth­er women. It’s a lit­tle bit of an obses­sion, like you are in love with them in a strange way because you can see the attraction.”

There is a stark dis­con­nect between the abun­dant sex life that Sophie sees her hus­band enjoy­ing and their sit­u­a­tion at home, watch­ing TV feet apart, with him dis­in­ter­est­ed in her body. ​“It was impor­tant for me to show that a lot of peo­ple who are in a rela­tion­ship are repressed sex­u­al­ly because their sex­u­al­i­ty depends on one per­son,” says Andra­sev. ​“The main char­ac­ter rarely sees her hus­band naked and vice ver­sa, or she’s mak­ing her­self avail­able but he’s not tak­ing the chances. Sin­gle peo­ple have a much health­i­er sex life in some ways. It can be sex­u­al­ly lone­ly in a rela­tion­ship too.”

The sto­ry is told with the phys­i­cal clar­i­ty of silent cin­e­ma, with a spell cast through a deli­cious­ly charged sound design by Péter Ben­jamin Lukács and orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions by Mads Vad­sholt. What instruc­tions did Andra­sev give them to cre­ate such a dreamy ambi­ence? ​“I was think­ing of her being in a jar that has a vacuum‑y atmos­phere,” she explains. ​“She’s in her own mind, even though she’s in a huge city. I imag­ined a New York City vibe, to show the end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties of anoth­er woman com­ing around the cor­ner and her lone­li­ness in such a huge city. It was great to work with Peter and Mads, the film would not be what it is now with­out them.”

Andra­sev also gives thanks to the pro­fes­sion­al ani­ma­tors – many of whom are friends of hers – who expe­dit­ed com­ple­tion with their expert skills. ​“I designed the char­ac­ters but for half of the back­grounds I had two back­ground artists to help me. There was one per­son, I basi­cal­ly gave him all the beau­ty shots – the pool, the under­wa­ter scenes and the sushi sequence – because I knew that he was real­ly good at erot­ic sen­su­al ani­ma­tions. I picked dif­fer­ent ani­ma­tors for dif­fer­ent parts of the film.”

Over the next six months Andra­sev will be work­ing as a co-ordi­na­tor on a fea­ture-length ani­ma­tion called White Plas­tic Sky by Tibor Bánócz­ki and Sarol­ta Szabó, set in a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic Budapest. So although she has an idea for her next film, it will be awhile before she has the time to work on it. Nonethe­less, it is tick­ing away in her mind, as she con­tem­plates approach­es that will have the req­ui­site sub­tle­ty. ​“It’s a sim­i­lar­ly per­son­al top­ic. I’m very afraid to make a didac­tic film. It’s an impor­tant theme to me and I don’t want to mess it up, so I real­ly need to take some time.”

I coax her to reveal more. ​“What’s inter­est­ing now as a top­ic is women who are in or approach­ing their for­ties and don’t have chil­dren yet. Maybe they put off this deci­sion until the last minute and have to make this deci­sion soon. I would like to make a film about this dilem­ma of women run­ning out of time, and if there is a thing that they can do, or should do, or not do. For me, it’s real­ly aggra­vat­ing that men don’t have to make this deci­sion. They don’t have a clock tick­ing like women do. I would like to be very cool and laid-back about dat­ing, but it’s like, ​‘Okay I can be cool and laid-back for two more years and then… good­bye’ It makes you feel like men view you as needy. Women are not needy, it’s just a deci­sion they have to make.”

Sym­bio­sis played at Indie Lis­boa which ran from 25 August to 9 September.