Robot Dreams review – a word­less wonder

If androids dream of elec­tric sheep, then what about robots? Judg­ing from the fan­tasies pre­sent­ed in the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed French-Span­ish ani­ma­tion Robot Dreams, they can be colour­ful, sur­re­al and psy­che­del­ic. Most­ly, though, the film’s hap­less Robot pro­tag­o­nist dreams of being reunit­ed with Dog, his own­er and best pal, after they are sep­a­rat­ed by cru­el cir­cum­stance and he is left, rust­ed and alone, on an out-of-sea­son plea­sure beach.

The film’s source, Sara Varon’s 2007 graph­ic nov­el of the same name, is a del­i­cate, word­less work that hinges sole­ly on the rela­tion­ship between the two friends with a gen­tle melan­choly ris­ing out of the dia­logue-free void. And Span­ish direc­tor Pablo Berg­er is no stranger to non-ver­bal cin­e­ma: his last film to receive a UK release was 2012’s Blan­canieves, a retelling of the Snow White fairy tale that resets the sto­ry to 1920s Spain and employs inky black-and-white cin­e­matog­ra­phy and peri­od-appro­pri­ate silent cin­e­ma stylings.

Robot Dreams is Berger’s first fling with ani­ma­tion, and he takes to the new art­form with evi­dent and infec­tious enthu­si­asm. Where the frames of Varon’s com­ic are point­ed­ly min­i­mal­ist, every frame in Robot Dreams is a glo­ri­ous ​‘Where’s Wal­ly?’ fres­co of ref­er­ences, nods and in-jokes.

Dog and Robot are adrift in a bustling metrop­o­lis pop­u­lat­ed by count­less unique anthro­po­mor­phic crea­tures, with the accu­mu­lat­ed detail pre­sent­ing a strange and delight­ful­ly spe­cif­ic evo­ca­tion of New York City in the 1980s: an era of microwave din­ners, Tab soft drinks, and Pong played on CRT TV sets. Mean­while, out­side Dog’s cramped apart­ment, the city’s cul­ture is in the ascen­dant: keep your eyes peeled for wildlife vari­ants of Madon­na, Spike Lee and Jean-Michel Basquiat roam­ing the streets.

Where this excess may threat­en to over­whelm the film’s cen­tral sto­ry, it instead infus­es it with renewed mean­ing, insist­ing on the impor­tance of con­nec­tion through the cacoph­o­ny of the big city. Berg­er can’t resist indulging in the expres­sion­is­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties of the medi­um – from kalei­do­scop­ic, Oz-like vis­tas, to stir­ring roller-skat­ing sequences set to Earth, Wind and Fire’s ​‘Sep­tem­ber’, to even a Bus­by Berke­ley-throw­back dance num­ber. Yet it’s in the small­er flour­ish­es that Robot Dreams excels.

The decep­tive­ly sim­ple designs of Dog and Robot are made of clear lines and soft colours that recall the most appeal­ing children’s pic­ture book, but the team of ani­ma­tors (head­ed by ani­ma­tion direc­tor Benoît Féroumont) bring metic­u­lous atten­tion to detail to how these char­ac­ters live on screen. With­out a word, their ges­tures and microex­pres­sions sug­gest a whole spec­trum of feel­ing as they weath­er their respec­tive emo­tion­al trials.

The mag­ic trick pays off when Robot Dreams takes an unex­pect­ed turn, and reveals itself not to be a straight­for­ward tale of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, but a more wise and world­ly mus­ing on the pass­ing of time and the nec­es­sary tran­sience of all things. How the vivid expe­ri­ences of today – the sights, the sounds, the peo­ple we love – will become the nos­tal­gic dreams of tomorrow.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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