The Annecy festival likes to take risks, go against the tide and offer surprising achievements for better and sometimes for worse. Seder-Masochism belongs to the category of cinematographic UFOs both in form and content and we salute his risk-taking and audacity!
A religious history revisited
Seder-Masochism is, as its name suggests, an interpretation of the traditional Seder meal, the Passover Passover Passover. This holiday commemorates the exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt, the 40 years of wandering in the desert and the arrival on "the promised land".
The film thus takes up the different stages of Seder's meal following the order of the four ritual glasses of wine. If tradition is respected in appearance, the audacious staging offers many surprises. Nina Paley does not hesitate to put her feminist grain of salt in this story of the patriarchs with the intervention of the original goddess at different stages of the plot. But back to our (sacrificial) sheep, Nina distills her subject while keeping the official plot, thanks to her particularly daring staging.
An economical and humorous animation
Nina Paley directed Seder-Masochism almost alone. As a result, and as for the very successful Have a Nice day, it had to resort to savings of means by finding original solutions. The animation is relatively economical, especially for the different avatars of the original goddess since it involves animating a skeleton applied to representations of ancient statuettes, and it works very well.
The rhythm is also given by different narrative phases, whether it is a Renaissance Jesus in the voice of an American radio host of the 1950s stating the different phases of Seder, or the dialogue between Nina, the rebellious little sheep on the altar of immolation in great conversation with the figure of the Most High, his father, on traditions and religion.
But it is especially during the episodes of the Exodus where all the dialogues are … More or less famous songs that give a particular relief to this film. The songs are particularly well chosen and fit perfectly with the words of the director, while highlighting a certain absurdity of the images.
Seder-Masochism is a film that will not please everyone, especially those who lack perspective and obscurantists. As such, it may never be released in theaters and we thank the Annecy festival for making us discover it. It is not really a feminist film, although, but it proposes a debate on conventions and pushes us to question the millennial dogmas that govern the three religions of the book.
