Reflective Encounters

“In an age where it’s still an uphill battle to #FreeTheNipple, Marie Valade’s Boobs offers a confrontational exploration of bodily autonomy and anatomy in the present day, which stretches its ideas to surreal ends. Pieced together with stop-motion paper-craft cut outs and fluid rotoscoped bodies, the film resembles a moving collage with natural human textures uncannily laid underneath it. In Valade’s film, breasts appear unnatural, as realistic paper cutouts hanging off animated bodies. In the course of the film, breasts are frequently detached, swapped, inflated and replaced, with scenes verging on body horror.

It reaches a point wherein boobs are no longer perceived as a natural part of the body, but a symbol of womanhood, carrying all the baggage it implies. For the women in the film, there is a mix of free wheeling excitement in flaunting and throwing their breasts around (literally) but also a sense of gloom, as their relationship with men is seen to revolve around these aesthetic features. At the same time, as the film calls for us to question the symbolic power that boobs have over society. Along with an added emphasis on body augmentation, one thinks of trans communities and those undergoing top surgeries. Are boobs such an important signifier of womanhood?”

— Matthew Chan