Reflective Encounters

“When a family meal turns into a heated family brawl, emotions are laid bare. As a mother battles her mother-in-law for matriarchal supremacy, a father clashes with his youngest child over dietary differences, whilst the eldest son eats his feelings and tries to avoid the rising tension of unspoken aggression and side-eyes laden with meaning. The animation here is used poetically to represent internal feelings: scale, exaggerated angles, and severe character design increases the sense of discomfort as family relations fray and threaten to sever entirely.

A free-form jazz score accompanies Supper, giving further weight to the harshness and vindictiveness depicted. The cut and thrust of action is meticulously choreographed to create moments of tension and threat. Director Dániel Bárány periodically returns to smaller visual tableaus to demonstrate the continuum of tit-for-tat comments and moments of hostility that can go unnoticed or, more often, un-commented upon, creating chasmic rifts and vast voids in families that then become destructive and potentially unreconcilable. These subtle moments are mirrored by imagined violence which eventually breaks through into a crescendo of real-world consequences. A powerful reminder of the duality of personal vision and internal thought, of what a momentary lack of compassion can do for those whom you should hold most dear.”

— Laura-Beth Cowley