By Daniel Bickermann. There are films, where an extensive interpretation would be nothing more than an annoying distraction from what is actually the main idea. This statement might rub some film analyst or other the wrong way, but is nonetheless true. A detailed analysis of the Marx Brothers' collected works probably wouldn't spoil the fun (that's another prejudice), but it wouldn't produce any real benefit to speak of, either.

Wouter Bongaerts' dialogue-free four minute feelgood movie MOUSE FOR SALE does exactly what it says on the package: it makes you feel good. No symbolic subtext, no pretentions. Some people find that disturbing. Freud once remarked, in a rare moment of lucidity, that sometimes a cigar is indeed only a cigar, but he immediately got so bored with that, that he instead flooded the world with a symbolic code system we still suffer from today. But an end of the debate at this point would be fatal, and the first question that pops up when a feelgood movie is mentioned, would be both obvious and essential: Is it any good? Because the answer is: Yes, indeed. And: Is that an easy thing? No, indeed not. Some people don't know the first thing about feelgood movies – that they're the most complicated genre of them all.

More than a year Wouter Bongaerts slaved away in digital handiwork to create this story about a big-eared mouse that doesn't pretend to be anything else than a small, well-done parable on loneliness and friendship. In a certain way this gives the film a kind of tragic aura, not too far removed from the tragic aura of said mouse. Because no one will compare MOUSE FOR SALE with its literary forebearers like “Cyrano de Bergerac” (which is a pity, really). And no one will go to the length of crossing the divide towards that other animated mouse with big ears and suspect a perfidious reference (which is not a pity at all, really, it was just an idea). Animation specialists may notice how much love of detail was put into surfaces, lighting of camera angles, but no mere audience member will likely think about how complicated it must have been to animate a laughing cockroach or to design an action sequence from the point of view of a flying peanut. Actually no viewer will ever suspect all the hardship and fears, all the sweat and labour that have gone into this film. And that is just as it should be. MOUSE FOR SALE is an old school film that thinks cinema first and foremost from the audience's point of view; that knows, that the filmmaker's effort has no purpose being felt in the finished product, and neither does any post-modernist self-adulation; that has set out explicitly to entertain and to touch people, and that's it. And if someone is the right viewer for this, if someone has the same kind of ears or the same eye for characters designed with love and care, and for brilliant digital handiwork, then that person will have found a true friend in this film.

Links

• MOUSE FOR SALE (B 2010. Wouter Bongaerts)
• Digital Handycraft – An interview with Wouter Bongaerts
• A Brilliant Dose of Irony – Cornelis Hähnel about the Belgium film market