Straightforwardly a film about loneliness and the search for connection, Pablo Berger’s animated feature, based on a graphic novel by Sara Varon, eschews dialogue for a rich sound design that complements its colorful, densely built 2D visuals. The setting is Brooklyn in the mid-1980s, which is populated by animals of all species and ethnic peculiarities, not a human among them. Our protagonist is Dog, a seemingly under-employed canine living in a nice studio apartment overlooking a busy street. Despite the clamor and constant movement that goes on outside his building, he mostly sits around eating processed food and watching television alone. One day he sees a late night ad for companions and orders one. What arrives is a generic silver-colored robot, which requires some assembly. Without much ado, Dog now has a friend, who we assume is programmed for such a task, and yet genuine affection is equally offered on both sides. 

The idyll is spoiled by an accident of timing. The two friends go to the beach at Coney Island, and after Robot unwisely enters the water his parts rust up and he can’t be moved by Dog, who goes home to fetch tools and manuals, returning the next day only to find the beach closed for the season. Unable to enter he goes home crestfallen, leaving Robot to dream about someday being found and/or reunited with his friend, as Dog tries in vain every trick in the book to make those dreams a reality. The kick here is the dreams, which range from all-out fantasy to musical numbers to old Hollywood-style melodrama. As Robot lays under the accumulating sand, Dog gets on with his life, forges other friendships that fade in due time. When the season begins again he rushes to Coney Island and finds that Robot is gone, the only evidence of his existence a piece of his hand. The viewer knows, however, that Robot has been picked up by an illicit metal scavenger who has sold what’s left of him to a scrap yard, which, in turn, sells the parts to a hobbyist who endeavors to put him back together with other parts cannibalized from different devices. 

The story, whose inertia has more to do with vibes than with plotting, doesn’t necessarily go where you expect it to go, and while the the movie is steeped in non-realism, the situation that unfolds is not only believable, but sublimely affecting because it makes so much sense emotionally. At once heartbreaking and humane (despite the fact that there isn’t a human in sight), Robot Dreams is the kind of movie that gives sincerity of purpose a good name.

Opens Nov. 8 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya 03-5468-5551).

Robot Dreams home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Arcadia Motion Pictures S.L., Lokiz Films A.I.E., Noddles Production SARL, Les Films du Worso SARL