No Android or AI is the enemy in “Robot Dreams,” Pablo Berger’s oddball fantasy about a lonely man who finds a friendship manufactured in a blurry image of 1980s New York City. Indeed, the takeaway from this shabby-happy Big Apple portrait, populated only by anthropomorphic animals and surprisingly sentient automatons, is that the world might be a better place without humans in it. Like “Blancanieves,” the quiet, flamenco-style adaptation of Snow White, Berger’s fourth feature dispenses with dialogue in favor of gleefully expressive, faux-naïve visual storytelling. But in all other respects, “Robot Dreams” is a significant left turn for the Spanish writer-director, starting with an entirely new medium: simple, hard-edged 2-D animation in the style of “BoJack Horseman,” softened by pastel. .”
However, both the film’s aesthetic and wordless approach are based on the 2007 graphic novel of the same name by American writer and illustrator Sara Varon. While Varon’s work is aimed primarily at young readers, the audience for Berger’s film, steeped in the nostalgia of Reagan-era New York with its roller discos and sidewalk stereos, is a little harder to pin down. It’s certainly clean enough for kids, with little in the way of sarcasm or sarcasm driving the similarly cool-looking adult animation, although younger pups may be bemused by its drifting, low-plot narrative and overriding air of melancholy. Yet the places where cult items can blossom are so strange; Already well-received at such festivals as Cannes and Annecy, “Robot Dreams” should build a sufficient following to prove its message to the lonely and lonely: when it comes to love, quality trumps quantity.
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Exactly what kind of love is the most intriguing question in a tale that hints at a somewhat queer friendship between its two seemingly (though not strictly) male-gendered principals, while remaining entirely chaste. (Given that they’re a dog and a mechanical robot, it’s hard to imagine how things could be otherwise.) While Dog, the eponymous hero, lives a lonely life in the East Village following a steady routine of work, walks, and sullenly microwaved TV dinners being introduced. – no one paid attention except the pigeons gathered around the apartment window. He’s a patient soul, but everyone has their limits: Late one night, inspired by an infomercial on the buzzing television set, he orders a bundle of a build-your-own robot kit, advertised in much the same way as a set. Ginsu steak knives.
Whatever the cost, it’s worth it. From the moment he meets, the eponymous Robot unexpectedly transforms into an extremely affectionate and responsive companion, forever focused on his canine owner with a metallic grin and perm-wide eyes. He’s not much of a talker, but neither is Dog. They spend their summer days sightseeing, sunbathing, eating hot dogs, roller skating in Central Park — in general, they spend Manhattan more or less the way Cole Porter described it decades ago, but their signature song is “September” by Earth, Wind and Fire . Always flexible, this disco nugget voices a montage of multiple friends in different moods and movements: Its enthusiasm matches the enthusiastic early stages of their friendship, but gradually becomes an ironic counterpoint in a story of loss and subconscious longing.
September arrives, and with it separation: After a day of gambling at Coney Island, Robot’s sea-soaked joints quickly rust, rendering him immobile. Unable to carry his friend home and the beach being closed for the winter, Dog has to endure the winter alone; Meanwhile, the abandoned Robot dries up and freezes in the cold, and its parts are plundered by pirate creatures. Only in more than one dream sequence (thus partially answering Philip K. Dick’s burning question about androids, but with no electric sheep) does he attempt to reunite with Dog. Spring will come, and so will some closure, but it’s fair to say that the uncompromising joy of the film’s opening acts is never regained. Unlike the happily ever after endings of the Disney series, “Robot Dreams” embraces the pleasantly mature philosophy that there can be more than one soulmate in an individual’s life and that a limited relationship is not a failed relationship.
It’s a poignant arc that perhaps isn’t solid enough to strengthen a 100-minute feature given to rhythm and narrative repetition. “Robot Dreams” would be no less effective or affecting as a short subject, but that format would undoubtedly have limited the cheerful volume of nifty visual jokes – many of which are cleverly attuned to the period – that Berger packs around his sweet, subtle tale (the frozen food and advertising of the era trends make for a good fight) and New York’s anything-goes street life. Above all, Berger’s film revels in the kind of eccentric, random sights and sounds that dreams of humans, animals, or androids might produce.
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