12/12/2022 - A review of Signe Baumane's second animated feature which deals with issues of female identity, patriarchy, restrictive social norms, and how biology underpins behaviour

Inspired by the filmmaker’s own experiences, My Love Affair with Marriage [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Signe Baumane
film profile] is Signe Baumane's second animated feature following Rocks in My Pockets [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Signe Baumane
film profile] (2014). While the earlier film explored depression and suicide, Baumane’s latest – which screened at the Animateka International Film Festival – deals with issues of female identity, patriarchy, restrictive social norms, and how biology underpins behaviour.

Pairing hand-drawn animation with three-dimensional sets, Love Affair follows Zelma who has been searching for her soulmate from an early age. She believes that love is all she needs, the only thing that can solve all her problems. When she enters school, however, she is confronted with a different concept of what a woman is expected to be and for a while learns to live with all of society’s restrictions, expectations, sexism and misogyny.

Our understanding of Zelma’s experiences is heightened by Baumane’s decision to use a soundtrack of female choir singers at key moments, which gives the film the feel of a musical through its ubiquitous role. The choir lends insight into Zelma’s internalised values, on the one hand, and societal pressures on women, on the other.

When Zelma comes of age, she enters her first intimate and marital relationships. Out of a desire to be loved and accepted, she assumes all the socially expected roles of a woman. She accommodates men, cooks for them, works for them, and at the same time endures rejection, deceit, violence, and the suppression of her own desires. At times when she can't take it anymore and is on the verge of rage, Baumane shows her transformation into an animal which grows physically larger, allowing us to share in her inner state through striking animation.

However, from one relationship to the next, Zelma becomes increasingly aware of how exploitative, violent, manipulative, and selfish her husbands have been under the guise of divided gender roles. As time passes, negative feelings awaken in her, causing her to question her sanity and leaving her determined to change her life story and take care of herself.

Baumane has a unique style. Her minimalist 2D characters contrast well with the three-dimensional backgrounds which give a deeper sense of the situation and space. The male and female characters are characterised in a very stereotypical way, but this stereotyping reinforces and shows even more radically the social dichotomy and the desperately unjust difference in attitude towards women and men. Sometimes, the characterisation is humorously literal. Baumane’s comic metaphors, sense of cynicism and irony lend levity to the seriousness of the film’s subject matter.

As Zelma says in the film - love is not just a word. And that's exactly what Love Affair shows: how actions show our love for another and how society, with all its expectations, restrictions and demands on women, prevents this.