– Alberto Vázquez’s animated feature about an unemployed mouse in an existential crisis of relentless performance anxiety was a highlight of Anifilm in Liberec
There was something unusually appropriate about watching Decorado inside Anifilm’s Cinema City in Liberec, a multiplex cinema buried in a shopping mall. The seats were almost excessively comfortable, the kind designed to make you forget both your body and the passing of time through the film. It didn’t matter that it seemed like a piece you would encounter in a midnight section instead, somewhere darker and stranger. The setting was already part of the experience.
Alberto Vázquez’s animated nightmare is, at its core, a film about performance and the frightening stability of systems that continue functioning long after many have stopped believing in them. Expanding on ideas first explored in his short film of the same name, Vázquez constructs a universe made of artificial interiors and drained characters trying to survive in a reality that already feels predetermined. His focus is on Arnold, an unemployed middle-aged mouse, who confides to his wife Maria that he suspects their entire world is a facade. The title itself reveals the film’s entire mechanism, and its explanation is given away to the viewer right at the beginning. “Decorado” means scenery, or stage set.
Visually, the animation is rich and textured. It combines softness with decay. It invites us into a town surrounded by a big forest and inhabited by human-like animals and creatures that immediately bring to mind BoJack Horseman, the dark, animated Hollywood-satire series, partly because of their anthropomorphic designs, but mostly due to the deep existential pessimism that hides beneath the surface of the comedy. At the same time, the director embraces a strong influence from The Truman Show, as he has mentioned, switching situations of absurd humour with feelings of despair. In one moment, the film feels almost playful, using conspiracy theories, self-proclaimed awakenings and the strange comfort people find in believing that someone, somewhere, controls everything. In the next, it delivers lines so brutally honest they feel impossible to flee from.
What makes Decorado so unsettling is that it never allows either its protagonist or the audience the relief of clarity. The narrative constantly transforms, without ever committing to one genre. There are two or three times that feel as though the film is about to end, only to be followed by another ride on this existential rollercoaster. Our mouse protagonist seems to be realising that there may be no authentic self whatsoever beneath the roles imposed by society. At one point, he is told that the best thing he can do is simply “be himself”. But what does that even mean in a world that was there before you and will continue after you? How much freedom can exist inside a system that makes sure you can’t dream? The only freedom, in the end, lies within love.
There is a famous phrase used by Mark Fisher to open his 2009 book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? claiming that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Decorado understands this perfectly. Capitalism here is presented as something much more multifaceted than an economic structure. It is in fact an enormous theatrical machine – an unstable production somehow held together by worn-out performers, false optimism, medication and police control. Even when some characters experience brief moments of awareness, the performance continues.
The cast may break down, revolt or lose faith, but the show must go on. By the time the curtains finally close again, Decorado has turned from a surreal animated comedy into something far more haunting. It leaves behind the disturbing feeling that there might be no escape from this big universal set after all.
Decorado is a Spanish-Portuguese production by Abano Producións (Spain), Uniko Estudio Creativo (Spain), The Glow Animation Studio (Spain), Sardinha em lata (Portugal) and María Y Arnold AIE (Spain). Le Pacte holds the rights to its world sales.
