Charlie Kaufman's latest film, Anomalisa, has dazzled and disturbed critics after it screened at the Telluride and Venice film festivals.
Kaufman is best known as the writer of acclaimed existential comedy dramas Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation, and writer-director of Synecdoche New York. He originally wrote Anomalisa as a sound play for stage, but following a seven-year break from directing has adapted it into his first stop-motion animation film with co-director Duke Johnson and the aid of Kickstarter funds.
The film follows the story of Michael Stone, a motivational speaker (voiced by David Thewlis) who experiences a typical Kaufman-like bout of existential crisis – in this case, the feeling that other people he meets are all disturbingly similar – until he meets Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh). Like all of Kaufman's works, it explores universal themes such as identity, love, mortality and the meaning of life.
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Critics, who viewed the film at the festivals over the past few days, have been lavish in their praise.
Anomalisa has given Kickstarter and Telluride "their first real masterpieces", says Catherine Shoard in The Guardian. It offers "images so moving and yet also so filthy" that the film may be the first X-rated winner of the best animation Oscar.
Shoard refers here to the stop-motion sex scene in the film, which has caused quite a stir. Deadline Hollywood reporting from the Venice film festival says that the film has "thrilled" audiences and the stop-motion is so seamless and real "that a sex scene between Michael and Lisa feels positively R-rated".
Peter Debruge in Variety was also reverential, calling Anomalisa "beautiful and heart-breaking, and ultimately unforgettable". Kaufman, says Debruge, has "done it again", writing a deeply flawed male protagonist and a woman who seems so incredibly ideal despite (or perhaps due to) her imperfections.
The film is brilliant but disturbing, says Robbie Collin in the Daily Telegraph. It teases out Michael's crisis with great imagination, but nothing can prepare you for its "sheer flesh-creeping oddness", which would be impossible to achieve in any medium other than animation.
Indeed, "wildly distinctive" doesn't even begin to describe it, says David Rooney in the Hollywood Reporter, and "it wouldn't be Kaufman if all the pieces made perfect sense".
Now all it needs is "an adventurous distributor to help it extend the Kaufman cult and find the adoring audience it richly deserves".
