From Omeleto.
A young girl tracks down a clown.
BUBBLES is used with permission from Carrie Gifford. Learn more at https://instagram.com/carriegiffordphotos.
Penny is about to turn 13. As she tries to plan her birthday party, she wants to hire her favorite clown, Bubbles. But Bubbles has fallen prey to an unbearable sadness and doesn’t do parties anymore.
But when Penny reaches out to Bubbles to invite her to her party, Bubbles is mired in sadness and isolation. On the day of Penny’s party, all seems hopeless for Penny, whose only wish may not come true.
Directed and written by Carrie Gifford, this whimsical short drama combines a charmingly colorful visual aesthetic with a melancholic emotional undertow, as a girl comes of age in a world where she doesn’t quite fit in. She’s a fan of Bubbles the clown, but Bubbles doesn’t quite fit in either, and the film charts the coming together of two misfits, who find an idyll of joy amid the rough and tumble of a noisy, sometimes insensitive world.
Much of the film’s charm comes from its playful yet melancholic aesthetic, which could be described as "retro suburban California meets Tim Burton," with an eerie yet whimsical musical score, an eye for the strangely striking and a sense of playful detail. In contrast to the almost maximalist visuals, the storytelling is more economical and pared down, focusing less on actions and events and more on mood, worldbuilding and character.
The people surrounding Bubbles and Penny have a kind of brittleness and artificiality, and while they don’t set out to be cruel, their words and gestures can feel bruising and unseeing, as represented by the smear of a partygoer’s finger in Penny’s birthday cake. Often framing Penny as the still point in a busy frame, the film conveys how a person can exist in reality but still feel invisible to the world and people around them.
Within this stylized storytelling, actors Arlo Mertz and Maya Knell as Penny and Bubbles, respectively, still delicately convey their characters’ difficulties and feelings, giving viewers some emotional grounding in this fanciful visual universe. While we don’t know why Bubbles became so sad or why Penny already possesses a world-weariness beyond her young years, BUBBLES still effectively conveys how out of place they feel in the world around them. So it’s a relief when the pair finally come together in a simple, nearly wordless yet joyful sequence that reminds us and them of the message in Penny’s invitation card to Bubbles. "The world needs your magic," and that magic is just being there for someone who cares about you.
