Un tour de manège

All pastel hues and soft focus, this animation is like a child's lovely dream but at the same time almost nightmarish in its context..

I think two interpretations can be possible with the storyline:

1. It's a metaphorical telling of a life's journey. A young girl is separated from her mother (possibly by her death), casts off into a vast ocean to find that there's a lot more to life than what she thought. She quickly grows up (the speed of growing up is represented by the sudden change in appearance at the turn of the carousel) to be a young woman, and meets a man. A animated sequence filled with various colours and shapes tells her story of love, passion & loss. At the end of it all, she is left old and weak, and a giant whirlpool engulfs her carousel, probably symbolising her death. She is reunited with her mother in afterlife (actually something a bit more vague than this, but can't find other way of explaining it) in the form of a pure child, and gasps in her warm embrace as if she's just woken up from a nightmare- it is as if the mother is saying 'Well done, you've successfully gone through the same journey as I have" and that they'll never part from now on.

2. Another (although the first is more likely) interpretation is much simpler: it's a tale of a family united after some dangerous divides in life. A man/woman is bound to take on their own journey away from their parents at some point in their life - for some, it would be their choice to gain independence; for others it would be for involuntary reasons like the parents' deaths. They go through several phrases in life: meeting friends, seeing new & curious things, finding a partner, separation, ageing, feeling lonely and faced with dangers. However, in the end, they realise that the old saying 'Home is where your heart is' is true and realise that nothing can be compared to the warmth of a mother's embrace.




My mum came back home yesterday after 2 weeks stay in Korea. We had a big hug yesterday when she came through the door, but I couldn't help doing so again when she woke me up this morning. This clip reminds me so much of how I felt at that moment, and make me want to cry, although my life is probably only at 0:20 now!:-D Forget about finding love and adventure, I'm gonna get a big rope and tie myself to the quay, hihi LOL