Lisa Limone and Maroc Orange: a Rapid Love Story (2013)

A Fruity Puppet Opera
"Lisa Limone and Maroc Orange, a Rapid Love Story"

Estonian animator Mait Laas has pulled off something quite remarkable — the world's first full-length puppet opera and Estonia's first full-length 3D film Lisa Limone and Maroc Orange, a Rapid Love Story (Lisa Limone ja Maroc Orange: Tormakas armulugu). Production of this spectacular piece took seven years and the film is a definite landmark in Estonian film history. Despite the promising introduction, the feedback has been somewhat controversial.

As the title of the film suggests, it's a hasty love story between a refugee orange boy Maroc and lemon girl Lisa. Seemingly the film has everything — a quirky set-up, story with a moral, great music, humorous irony, allegory, social criticism, peculiar moments particular Estonian animation and great visuals thanks to a tremendous amount of work. Still it lacks of structure, comprehensibility and struggles with narrating.

In addition to immigration and relationships, Lisa Limone and Maroc Orange raises the question of defining and keeping one's identity in this multicultural world. All of the three subjects are significant, but the message of the film is weak. Some motifs are over-simplified and explained too much and others tend to be too complicated and not explained enough. Even though it is meant as a family film, Mait Laas doesn't restrain himself from using grotesque and expressiveness particular Estonian animation, but it often tends to stay complex and hard to understand.

Most Estonian films are accused of having a weak scenario and lacking skills in storytelling. In Lisa Limone and Maroc Orange's case it might be true. It could be due to the fact that at the beginning of production the film was supposed to be 30 minutes long but it the process it was stretched to 72 minutes. Even though the running time was extended, the film still contains 30 minutes worth of storyline. Rest of the film is rather excellent yet idle animation.

Lisa Limone and Maroc Orange has excellent sound design in addition to great music. Many renowned Estonian actors and musicians gave their voice to the fruit puppets and sang Ülo Krigul's beautiful songs. And yet it seems as if the music is trying to compensate for the weak plot and fill the remaining 42 minutes and therefor becomes a bit repetitive and tiring. For credibility the songs are in French and Italian, Estonian language is used only for one or two sentences.

The greatest strength of the animation is its visuals. 70 puppets, 250 tomato plants, 1300 tomatoes, 8 houses and 3 cars were made for the film. It takes a month to make one puppet and not to mention the thoroughness and detailed work. For example, the sizes of the tomatoes varied from one to three millimeters. It took two years to develop the story, one year to make the puppets, three years to animate and one year for after effects — and all that with a budget of only 1,1 million euros. It means that the animators worked from eight to five for three years, making 5-10 seconds of animation every day. As for one frame consists of 24 shots, it makes 109 500 single shots altogether and that's an intimidatingly big number.

Lisa Limone and Maroc Orange gloriously justifies using 3D, because with its help the details, materials and structures come to life and offer a wonderful visual experience. It has this unique and sweet homemade taste and is perfect with its imperfections. Director Mait Laas says that it was a very creative three years because a lot of materials were experimented. It's worth mentioning that after a lot of experimenting for example manna, cotton batting and light gravel was used and only the stormy sea and some steam was made with special effects.

Lisa Limone and Maroc Orange is without a doubt a significant film in Estonian film history and fascinating in technical and effects-wise, but it grows short in consistency and ability to comprehensibly make a statement. The “must-see” animation of the year earns points for hard work and being a great visual experience.
By Maarja Hindoalla
FIPRESCI - Festival Reports - Tallinn 2013 - Workshops - Day 04, http://www.fipresci.org/festivals/archive/2013/tallinn/tallinnts/day_04.htm (25.01.2015).