General News

The Pearce Sisters - Winner of the 2008 BAFTA (Short Film Animation)

I’ve found both a wonderful blog and a wonderful short. “Short of the Week” is a blog with a fairly self-explanatory title but I’ll spell it out for you. Each week, a fav short film is posted. This week’s choice was Luis Cook’s “The Pearce Sisters.” The film is based on a short story by Mick Jackson about two sisters who hold tea parties with a motley crew of corpses they pull from the nearby sea, smoke and then dress up for tea and cakes. For some reason, smoking your dining companion as one might a salmon is a must for the Pearce sisters, but perhaps you’d have to read the story to find out the theory behind that.

Anyway, watching the short reminded me of the oddly prevalent image of a group of skeletons sitting down to dine. Very Beetlejuice. But also, there’s some sort of “serves you right” gesture in this image. These supposedly complacent diners are too busy with social etiquette to acknowledge their own impending death until it’s too late. The dead tea party also hints at the inanity of these gatherings as the invited have quite possibly died from boredom. In “The Pearce Sisters,” the image is used differently to symbolise the sisters’ loneliness. There’s still a hint of all these other suggestions though as the sisters are clearly so out of touch with reality and society that they still imitate a long dead past-time.

Related links: Short of the Week Blog, Aardman Animation

www.shortoftheweek.com

www.aardman.com/