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Title: The Triangle
Original Title: Kolmnurk
Country: Russia (But translated in Estonian)
Genre: Romance / Surrealism / Comedy
Company: Tallinnfilm
Directed by: Priit Parn
Year: 1982
MPAA Rating / TV Rating: N/A
Buy on: Amazon
The story starts off with a married couple named Viktor and Julia spending a quiet evening together. Julia is busy making dinner for her husband Viktor and is trying to get his attention. But unfortunately, Viktor kept on reading his newspaper, ignoring Julia's cooking and her attempts to get his attention. One day however, a man named Eduard, who is the size of a mouse, suddenly comes out from the couple's stove and starts flirting with Julia, while trying to get a meal out of her. At first, Julia was suspicious of Eduard. But the more Viktor kept ignoring her, the more that Julia started to take a liking to Eduard, which eventually leads to Julia feeding Eduard all of the food in the house. This upsets Viktor so much that he decided to leave Julia. Afterwards, Eduard decides to move in with Julia and Julia cooks him various meals. But then Eduard starts ignoring Julia's cooking just like Viktor originally did and Julia starts wondering if she should get back together with Viktor.
Wow! This was seriously one weird animated short! I have seen many weird animated shorts, but none of them were quite as weird as this one! The only other animated short that was just as weird as this short was Hen, His Wife, which also had a similar premise of a couple experiencing marital problems. This short was a bit easier to understand than "Hen, His Wife," but it still requires some interpretation on the situation that is going on. So, here's my take on what I think is happening in this short:
My Interpretation:
So, apparently Viktor and Julia were a happy couple when they were first married. But over the years, Viktor started to ignore Julia and Julia is trying desperately to get her husband's attention again. I'm assuming that the food that Julia cooks represents her sexual desires for Viktor, as the food seem to weirdly take on any shape or form of her body. Also, there were moments where realistic photo shop images of real life people would appear on both Julia and Viktor's faces, representing their desires to look beautiful towards each other. Then when the mouse sized man, Eduard comes between Julia and Viktor, Julia feeding Eduard the food that she made represents her having an affair with Eduard, due to wanting to feel wanted by somebody, since Viktor won't give her the attention that she wants. So, when Viktor sees Julia feeding Eduard the food that she originally made for him, this could be viewed as Viktor finally noticing Julia having an affair with Eduard and he decides to leave her because of that. Whether or not Julia and Viktor get back together with each other in the end is something you have to see for yourself!
I just loved the way that Priit Parn created these bizarre characters as it was interesting yet a bit disturbing seeing real life photos of people's faces suddenly appear on either Viktor, Julia or Eduard's faces as those real life photos look so out of place on these hand drawn characters. I also liked the interesting way that Priit Parn tackled the issue of martial problems by using food as a metaphor for the couple's deteriorating marriage.
The only problem that I had with this short was that it was a bit confusing to understand at times. Like, I wasn't really sure how the food plays a role in the couple's relationship with each other and I was wondering about where Eduard exactly came from. I mean, this is really good stuff for a surreal short, but it can be a bit hard to swallow at times.
Overall, "The Triangle" is a truly intriguing animated short about martial problems that anyone who is in a relationship will enjoy watching (just to see how weird this short was). Also, if you are a huge fan of foreign shorts, then this is definitely one short that you should check out!
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