BoxBallet

Boxer “Evgeny” is one of those blokes that you’d eagerly cross the street to avoid. He look every inch the pugilist, and is often covered with cuts and bruises. “Olya”, meantime has legs that go all the way up to her armpits, and is the epitome of the elegant and delicate ballerina. They meet and gradually begin to explore each other’s starkly contrasting worlds. They go to galleries and museums, she to his fights and he even sits through one of her ballets. Despite their differences, they thrive - but can their relationship survive? There is some lovely quirkiness to this sometimes quite brutal and other times quite comical animation, not least when the boxers decide they’ve had enough of the pesky referee, or when he brings her a half-ton bag of sugar as a gift (but is too shy to personally deliver it) or when she effortlessly reaches for the salt on a shelf about ten feet off the ground. It takes a slight dig at Russia’s Soviet past and in some way their relationship could be analogous of the old, rotten, bear giving way to the new shoots of reform? This animation has some fine detail to it, is underscored by plenty of Tchaikovsky and I did enjoy it.