Dir. György Kovásznai / 1979 / 69m
Hungarian director György Kovásznai’s wildly idiosyncratic animated musical is one of the most indescribably strange, personal and totally irresistible cartoon features ever made. A walking ball of anxieties, shop window decorator Zsolt (voiced by Kornél Gelley, with Albert Antalffy singing) bursts into the apartment of his fiancée’s best friend Anikó (voiced by Vera Venzcel, with Kati Bontovits singing), paralyzed with fear at his impending marriage. Zsolt is like a stoned hippie alleycat, or an Eastern European Frank Zappa in a tux; medical student Anikó a more curvaceous and leggy post-modern Betty Boop – and both unsure of their attraction to each other, of the choices they’ve made, of what life has in store for them.
A truly insane mash-up of styles, from 1920s Art Deco to 1960s Psychedelia to late 1970s louche Roxy Music decadence, BUBBLE BATH is incredibly restless and creative, the bohemian love-child of Bill Plympton’s off-kilter individualism and Ralph Bakshi’s wonderfully warped, rubbery visual style. In other words: it’s not quite like any animated film you’ve ever seen before.
“A gallopingly neurotic modernist-psychedelic musical from 1979 that bubbles and pulsates with anxieties about modernity … With characters and settings constantly warping, tilting and transmogrifying, BUBBLE BATH is visually something special; like Van Gogh, Fleischer Studios, Robert Crumb, YELLOW SUBMARINE and the abstract-thought section of Pixar’s INSIDE OUT smooshed into a great lysergic battenberg cake.” – Phil Hoad, The Guardian.
ANIMATION CLUB is an ongoing series that celebrates new and classic animated films from around the world! From studio titans to hidden indie gems; traditional 2D to stop-motion, 3D animation, experimental, and everything in-between!
