Deep Sea

Shenxiu is a small girl; her mother has gone, her father has remarried, and nobody pays her any attention. On a family holiday cruise she falls into the water one night and finds herself in a place called the Deep Sea Restaurant: a vessel floating under the sea, full of strange creatures and constantly in motion. Nanhe, who owns it, does not want her there and puts her to work to pay her debt. Tian Xiaopeng directs. What distinguishes it is the technique. The team developed a method called particle ink to obtain the underwater image; the colours move like dye dispersing in water and the scenes resemble flowing paint more than three dimensional animation. Software was developed for years to achieve it. The subject underneath is depression. The colourful, crowded undersea world is built as an escape, and the film explains at the end what it was; it begins as a children's story and arrives somewhere else. The colour red is used as a marker inside the narrative and its repetition is deliberate. Tian Xiaopeng was known for Monkey King: Hero Is Back; this second feature took him seven years. It opened in China over new year and its visual side was widely praised. Who it is for: viewers who like technically ambitious animation and dark fables. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy for small children, the narrative scatters in the middle, and the metaphor stays closed until the end.