I Married a Strange Person

An animated story about a newlywed couple who run into problems when the husband develops supernatural powers through the cable network. His fantasies become reality, and this phenomenon bothers his wife, but attracts some power hungry people.
''Get out of here, Frank! You're a very strange person!'', says Grant's newlywed wife when she leaves him, and one can understand her. Grant is strange, and it would be odd if he weren't seeing as he's a cartoon figure drawn by animator Bill Plympton. This cartoonist, whose work has been shown on MTV, as well as elsewhere, has created a very peculiar fantasy world.
”I Married a Strange Person” is Plympton's second longer film and in this hallucinatory fantasy we are swept along in this unmistakably plymptonic world; a world inhabited by people who transform into anything from snakes to stringed instruments, people who get mutilated and blow to bits, people who are actually overgrown blades of grass. And, people who have sex. Everything has sex. Even 50 ton tanks. Forget old worn-out clichés like trains shooting into tunnels! Here we see a cake of soap rub seductively against the soap dish, a light bulb plunge in and out of the socket, even the electrical outlet is in ecstasy. Everything has a life of it's own in Plympton's imagination. You can't help but get turned on by the bulb's rhythm and breathing.
Plympton is extremely skilful at taking full advantage of the medium's three-dimensional possibilities, using every imaginable angling. One moment we are a kilometre up in the air flying on a giant butterfly, the next we see how belly button cheese develops inside the body.
As a member of the audience one is pulled along regardless of what strange situations Grant and his family end up in. Plympton himself has described ”I Married a Strange Person” as a cross between ”Akira ”and ”Pulp Fiction”. We are fed a veritable orgy of violence in this world, that though animated is definitely not for children, and yet it is done in such a way so as not to be repulsive or disgusting. The violence and sex become instead comical and very bizarre pictorial experiments, and with the aftertaste, the political social criticism subsides. No aspect of the American phenomenon is left unparodied - cheerleaders, rodeo cowboys, and that ritual suburban phenomenon lawn mowing, and, of course, the power hungry men in suits sitting high up in their offices in glass covered skyscrapers. One by one they are given a good butchering by Plympton's razor sharp pen.
Linda Hedihn

Premiärstatus
Nordisk premiär: Medverkande
Animation: Producent
Bill Plympton: Manus
Bill Plympton: Foto
John Donnelly: Musik
Maureen McElheron: Talat språk
English