The Girl Who Cried Pearls

Bluesky

Humans have some strange obsessions. The most precious ingredient in perfume is ambergris, excreted from the bile ducts of sperm whales as they digest their food. Among the most precious jewels are pearls, a protective excretion produced by clams. Humans themselves can produce pearls of a sort – concentrations of calcium carbonate in the skin – under certain conditions, which is perhaps one of the reasons why humans or human-like creatures have been associated with them in myths, though the way they form there is a little prettier. Aphrodite is said to have cried tears of joy which solidified into them. They have also been thought of as mermaids’ tears, and there is a legend of an Indian princess who wept pearls after learning of the death of the man she loved. Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski’s Oscar-longlisted short film invents another such tale, with its own measure of heartbreak, and a twist.

Told by an old man to his granddaughter, who has an eye for shiny things, the story looks back to his youth in Montreal, when he was a hungry orphan scavenging for food by the docks and sleeping in abandoned buildings. If one could find such a residence adjacent to one that was occupied, he explains, one might feel the heat of the fire through the wall. Naturally, sitting against the wall meant one might also hear what was going on in a house, and he talks about the time when he heard a stepmother repeatedly abusing a lonely girl. At night the girl would cry, and peering through a hole, he saw her tears, made of the purest sorrow, turn to pearls. Acquiring some of these, he took them to a pawnbroker and was paid better than he had ever been before. To get more, however, he had to make sure that the girl remained unhappy, presenting him with a terrible dilemma, as he was falling in love with her.

This is a film about stories and the power that stories have. Like a nacreous pearl, it’s built up in semi-transparent layers, allowing attentive viewers to catch glimpses of what’s underneath, whilst others will simply enjoy the richness of its lustre. The puppets through which it’s told, meanwhile, resemble false pearls, their faces layered on over white plastic. Different undertones in the skin tell us something about them even before they speak: the jaundiced yellow of the cynical pawnbroker, the melancholy blue of the girl, the sickly green of the half-starved boy. They all have wonderfully detailed hands, some of the best yet seen on film, seen in exchanges of pearls and money and occasionally the giving of a gift.

The care taken with the puppets is echoed in the landscape through which they move. It feels coherent and particular, but is assembled from an eclectic assemblage of materials and found objects, especially in the pawnshop. One might watch this over and over again across the course of years and still spot new treasures hidden away in the background. Masterful lighting adds to the atmosphere, and then there’s Patrick Watson’s wonderful score, its melodies shifting and blending as they add heart to the central fable and hint at the larger one layered around it.

Of all this year’s animated shorts, this is the one likely to linger longest in the memory, a true gem of a film.

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