“Flow” is the latest dialogue-free animated film to look to movement and sound to express its characters’ emotions.
Like Noah’s Ark minus the humans, a vessel carrying an odd bunch of creatures is afloat after a flood in the immersive computer-animated film “Flow.” Led by a black cat, the group faces the dangers of nature together, often struggling to get along yet communicating entirely without dialogue.
It’s the second wordless feature from the Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis, who argues that animation is more expressive than live action.
“You can use that expressiveness to convey things usually said with words,” he said in a recent video interview.
We see how the animals behave — including a stoic capybara, a cheerful dog, a regal secretary bird and a rambunctious lemur — Zilbalodis added, and that’s our way into understanding the characters.
The winner of the audience award at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the world’s most prominent event for the medium, “Flow” is now the Latvian Oscar entry for best international feature film, a category for films not in English — an ironic designation, given that it’s a wordless fable.
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Source: Movies - nytimes.com
