https://www.filmfestivals.com/blog/the_robin_menken_reviews/my_love_affair_with_marriage

“My Love Affair With Marriage”  

Posted by Robin Menken

     Signe Baumane’s multi award-winning “My Love Affair With Marriage” is a exuberant mixed-media feature animation, a musical blend of neuroscience, gender issues and old fashion romance- gone wrong!

      Baumane’s signature style goes back to her earliest shorts in the late 90’s. Her poignant characters are sexy and pulpy-featured and, by 2014, when she made her video Tarzan and her first feature "Rocks In The Pocket”, Baumane adopted a vivid color palette.

      Baumane's "Rocks in my Pockets" was a 100-year history of depression and/ or suicide of women in her family. "My Love Affair With Marriage" is far more upbeat.

      Baumane, who is delightfully funny in person, explained that she made many films about sex because it was so interesting; then she made a film about depression, which she describes as “more interesting than sex”. Then she decided to make a film about a combination of the two- marriage!

       Born in Latvia, Baumane's film contains many satiric notions of life in the era of the Soviet Union: I.e. a repressed Soviet era funeral and a subsequent civil marriage, both culminating in an official choral recording of the State Anthem of the USSR. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the drab Soviet women, now dressed in Western ‘Slut-wear’ try to school Zelma in the new cultural norm-transactional sex for riches in the Wild Wild East era of Oligarch kleptocracy.

     A daffy animated, musical Bildungsroman, the film details young Zelma's journey to wholeness.  Zelma (Dagmara Dominczyk) begins as a questioning, spirited girl unable to fit in to the stereotypical behavior of girls in her culture.

     Like a sexy Greek Chorus, the Mythology Sirens (a trio of animated Harpies voiced by the the band Trio Lemonade: Iluta Alsberga, leva Katkovska, Kristine Pastare) comment on Zelma's crazy journey.

      As a young girl in her village on Sakhalin Island, Zelma moons after a herd of cats. (In fact, she becomes a cat when she expresses her rage). A few years later, now a Riga city dweller, she’s dreaming of her Soul Mate.

       Sent to a State school, she is initially shunned by girls and boys alike because she fights for her self respect. Modeling herself on the most popular girl Elita (Erica Schroeder), Zelma begins a devout self transformation, fueled by peer pressure, fairy tales, and the advice of her mother.

     Newly conditioned to not fight, Zelma tries crying to ward off a knife attack while her craven ‘Soul Mate’ fails to come to her defense, when a pack of school boys mug her after school.

     As a young woman, unofficially enrolled in Misogyny U, she learns to get along with men, willingly suppressing her desires, cooking, cleaning and ironing for them, even supporting them in exchange for ‘helpful’ criticism, sexual betrayal, emotional and physical abuse.

     Her first husband Sergei (Cameron Monaghan) is another artist she met in University. After the sudden death of her partying, druggie best friend Darya (Carolyn Baeulmer) shell-shocked Zelma marries Sergei. 

     Besotten with sex, and desperate to merge, Sergei begins with adoration, but soon he’s comparing everything she does to his beloved mother. His shaming criticism leads to endless abuse. 

     He can’t get a job, Zelma takes in piece work to support Sergei. He mocks and scorns her, and goes out partying. Divorcing Sergei, Zelma swears to never fall in love again.

     The Soviet Union collapses. The new rich support Sergei’s art work. Money rains on him. No-one gets Zelma’s work. Her agent arranges to send her to Denmark for an art opening. The West!

     At the opening, Zelma admires the perverse innocence of Swedish painter Bo (Matthew Modine), a secret transvestite. She falls in love with his strange Western-ess. They marry. They move to Canada, but house-bound Zelma can’t work without a permit. Moved by his sensitivity, Zelma longs to protect Bo, but soon she’s behaving just like Sergei, ceaselessly shaming and criticizing Bo. 

    Once free of Bo Zelma’s real life begins. Along the way we learn about the biological and genetic underpinnings to the emotions of bonding, addictive stress release, violence and L.O.V.E. via witty animated sequences by Yajun Shi, narrated by Michele Pawk. (Baumann played with this biologic element briefly in an earlier short 2009 "Birth”.)

    Think feminist “Inside Out” or Arthouse “Fantastic Journey”.  Does anyone remember the Frank Capra animation “Hemo The Magnificent”?

    At our Q&A, filled with some of the film’s 1,685 Kickstarter backers,  Baumane described her unique animation style. Producer and chief builder Sturgis Warner builds 3D sets from found wood scraps. These are built up for texture with papier-mache and many layers of paint. After set dressing, the sets are photographed. Sturges is the head lighting man. 

     Prints of the sets are used like the hand-painted background cells of classic flat animation. Baumane draws the characters to place on the set stills. Everything is sent to various teams in Europe to color, add special effects and composite, perfectly merging  the images. Sound effects, voicing and sprightly songs round out the finished Hormonal Musical.

      Baumane wrote the loosely autobiographical script and lyrics, directed and co-produced. She animated all of the character action scenes. Kristian Sensini wrote the film’s music with lyrics by Baumane. Baumane’s longtime partner Sturgis Warner is the film’s co-producer, set builder and main lighting man. 

      Latvian-born, Brooklyn-based Signe Baumane is an independent filmmaker, artist, writer, and animator. She has made 16 award-winning animated shorts and is best known for her first animated feature "Rocks in my Pockets”, released in U.S. through Zeitgeist Films. Signe has a degree in Philosophy from Moscow State University and is a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow in Film for New York Foundation for the Arts. 

      “My Love Affair with Marriage” is a co-production between Latvian Studio Lokomotive, Luxumbourg’s Antevita Films and Baumane’s The Marriage Project LLC in Brooklyn.

       “My Love Affair With Marriage” was a festival darling , playing Tribeca 2022, EIFF 2022, Black Nights 2022, Sands 2023, Karlovy Vari 2022, Zagreb World Festival of Animated Films (2023 Winner Grand Prize), Annecy 2022  (Winner Jury Distinction Best Feature Film). To date it has won over a dozen Best Film, or Best Animated Feature Awards and played over 130 International Film Festivals.