Umbrellas is an amazing animated short film that offers a brilliant combination of technical prowess, deft pacing and classic narrative devices - all while impressing with its originality. With watercolour sets and 2D animated characters, the animation technique chosen by José Prats and Alvaro Robles is not a million miles from the first Disney Studios’ animated films. The film’s rhythm, captivating music and suspense grab our attention almost like an action film. And yet, there is nothing traditional or hackneyed about this film. In both its form and narration, Umbrellas features plenty of original ideas and it depicts with great simplicity the basic formative challenges that every human being must face.
In a surreal violet sky, a flock of umbrellas drift towards Earth with babies in baskets attached to their handles. Whether they are animals or humans, the babies are delivered to their parents’ doorsteps. One of the umbrellas has a hole in it – and that is the cause of a kind of ‘original trauma’: the little girl carried by that umbrella grows up with a terrible phobia of rain. Fortunately, fate decreed that she should have a father with an enormous beard that can act as an umbrella for her. With such a shelter the little girl grows – and then one day, she finds it is time for her to become the protector of someone else smaller than her …
Using umbrellas as a motif, the film carefully and elegantly portrays a raft of complex ideas about the connections we have with the Other and with the world – attachment, protection, fear, difference, freedom, etc. The umbrella serves to show the bond between the little girl and her father. First it brings her to him. And it saves her when she finds herself suspended high up. And it ultimately helps her protect someone smaller than her. As a definitive transitional item, the umbrella is the physical representation of the father’s eagerness to help protect his daughter from her fears and her difficulty in confronting them. While the dad’s beard acts for a while as a shelter for the girl, he also repairs the hole in the umbrella so that she can face her fears alone. Ultimately the girl severs her dependency on her dad by cutting off his beard. This array of images with strong metaphorical power are very nicely used throughout the film, which has no need for words to say the most important things. When she feels protected, the colours around the little girl become warmer and more cheerful – this canny concept gives us a key to the child’s feelings. Using watercolours for the sets emphasises the theme of water that flows through the whole film.
