Living Still Life
2014·Science Fiction·16m
7.1
★
In a world in decay, a woman collects her dead animals and restores them to life by filming them images by image.
Directed by Bertrand Mandico
IMDB
N/A
Cast
Elina Löwensohn
Fièvre
Crew
Bertrand Mandico
Director
Bertrand Mandico
Writer
Popular Reviews
28 reviews
Ash
7.0★ · 04/03/26
Love the idea of the decaying land and the use of stop motion, very much a bit of me!!
Love the idea of the decaying land and the use of stop motion, very much a bit of me!!
Ellen Laursen
7.0★ · 02/27/26
the most that colors have ever colored
the most that colors have ever colored
Célène
9.0★ · 08/11/25
To find beauty in decay, to immortalize what was meant to vanish. Mandico turns what is rotting into something eternal, giving movement and breath to what should have been lifeless. It’s a meditation on time, loss, and the strange tenderness of preserving the impermanent.
To find beauty in decay, to immortalize what was meant to vanish. Mandico turns what is rotting into something eternal, giving movement and breath to what should have been lifeless. It’s a meditation on time, loss, and the strange tenderness of preserving the impermanent.
ignacia jerez
8.0★ · 05/13/25
decadent but hauntingly beautiful. there's a thin line between giving dignity and achieving resignification, but I love that she left their nature intact.
for a moment they were truely alive again.
for a moment they were truely alive again.
decadent but hauntingly beautiful. there's a thin line between giving dignity and achieving resignification, but I love that she left their nature intact.
for a moment they were truely alive again.
for a moment they were truely alive again.
Sepia GorePRO
I am so fascinated by Bertrand Mandico, how his films feels like this Roschach test where you can read anything into his bold subversive nonsensical cinematic ideas or dismiss them entirely as gross styling incomprehensible pretension and you wouldn’t be wrong to do either or even both. What you do get a sense of from all his films is that he’s dreaming and he’s using films to dream whatever it is he’s dreaming, it is hard to review this or any of his works, all I could really do is explain why this resonates with me.
Living Still Life reminds of when I made stop motion films when I was a kid, they weren’t great or anything but they help me, make me less lonely as I invest myself into the hobby of make believe, making the inanimate seemingly come to life for just a few minutes so of course I can’t help but see some of that here for me personally, the main character picking up dead animal bodies and using stop motion to make them return to life for a split second. It’s morbid but also playful, throughout you don’t really know why she’s doing what she’s doing but something is clearly driving her, the need to create maybe? To preserve? Who knows maybe that’s what film is about? Keeping us alive both cinematically and experientally? For me this captures that feeling I had as a kid but in the most haunting, mournful way, a reminder that whatever we do, even if we are keeping something alive that isn’t gonna stop time from counting us down to our inevitable end.
Living Still Life reminds of when I made stop motion films when I was a kid, they weren’t great or anything but they help me, make me less lonely as I invest myself into the hobby of make believe, making the inanimate seemingly come to life for just a few minutes so of course I can’t help but see some of that here for me personally, the main character picking up dead animal bodies and using stop motion to make them return to life for a split second. It’s morbid but also playful, throughout you don’t really know why she’s doing what she’s doing but something is clearly driving her, the need to create maybe? To preserve? Who knows maybe that’s what film is about? Keeping us alive both cinematically and experientally? For me this captures that feeling I had as a kid but in the most haunting, mournful way, a reminder that whatever we do, even if we are keeping something alive that isn’t gonna stop time from counting us down to our inevitable end.
I am so fascinated by Bertrand Mandico, how his films feels like this Roschach test where you can read anything into his bold subversive nonsensical cinematic ideas or dismiss them entirely as gross styling incomprehensible pretension and you wouldn’t be wrong to do either or even both. What you do get a sense of from all his films is that he’s dreaming and he’s using films to dream whatever it is he’s dreaming, it is hard to review this or any of his works, all I could really do is explain why this resonates with me.
Living Still Life reminds of when I made stop motion films when I was a kid, they weren’t great or anything but they help me, make me less lonely as I invest myself into the hobby of make believe, making the inanimate seemingly come to life for just a few minutes so of course I can’t help but see some of that here for me personally, the main character picking up dead animal bodies and using stop motion to make them return to life for a split second. It’s morbid but also playful, throughout you don’t really know why she’s doing what she’s doing but something is clearly driving her, the need to create maybe? To preserve? Who knows maybe that’s what film is about? Keeping us alive both cinematically and experientally? For me this captures that feeling I had as a kid but in the most haunting, mournful way, a reminder that whatever we do, even if we are keeping something alive that isn’t gonna stop time from counting us down to our inevitable end.
Living Still Life reminds of when I made stop motion films when I was a kid, they weren’t great or anything but they help me, make me less lonely as I invest myself into the hobby of make believe, making the inanimate seemingly come to life for just a few minutes so of course I can’t help but see some of that here for me personally, the main character picking up dead animal bodies and using stop motion to make them return to life for a split second. It’s morbid but also playful, throughout you don’t really know why she’s doing what she’s doing but something is clearly driving her, the need to create maybe? To preserve? Who knows maybe that’s what film is about? Keeping us alive both cinematically and experientally? For me this captures that feeling I had as a kid but in the most haunting, mournful way, a reminder that whatever we do, even if we are keeping something alive that isn’t gonna stop time from counting us down to our inevitable end.