LogFAQs > #975265640

17. The Girl Without Hands

Plasma: 5
Evillord: 7
Suprak: 10
Johnbobb: 11
Mythiot: 12
Karo: 19
Red: 20
Inviso: 29
Ermine: 30

Total: 143

Plasma: Aside from some pacing issues, I loved this one. The art style lends a surreal atmosphere to the story, which is simple yet captivating. I love how the girl faces harsh obstacles, yet she perseveres and strives to protect her family. And despite all the horrible things done to her by her father and the devil, at the end she gives her husband a chance to explain himself and gets rewarded for maintaining faith in humanity. This movie has charm, sincerity, and heart. B

Evillord: A French adaptation of a tale by The Brothers Grimm with only a few minor tweaks. It's undoubtedly one of the most visually stunning movies on the list with its hand-painted outline look, to the point where even stills are striking to look at. I didn't know about this story before I saw the film, and it surprised me with how bleak it wasn't, after an opening that could have been a set-up for misery porn and its medieval unscrupulousness toward violence, excrement, and nudity. I mean the first scene has the devil take the form of a large man wearing only a cloak on his back, and he then crouches to speak to the girl's father giving the audience a clear view of his fat, swinging devil cock.
The girl without hands mostly gets by alright and there is a lot of good detail about just *how* she manages. This lends the movie some decent emotional range after how horrific the girl's treatment by her father was in the early scenes (he accidentally sells her to the devil but doubles down on that choice after many chances to back out), but the film remains tense throughout because the devil's promise to reclaim her is always in the back of the viewer's mind. I kept waiting for the final cruel twist of fate to seal her doom and wound up feeling pleasantly surprised when that wasn't what happened.

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Johnbobb: I really love the distinct art style; it strikes me as a filmmaker/animator making the most of what was probably a very limited budget and really emphasizes the "old folk tale" feeling of the film. I was really into it early on as I'm kind of a sucker for sneaky devil deal fantasy stories. It very distinctly slows done quite a bit as it goes though, kind of dragging in the 3rd quarter in a way that a <80 minute movie shouldn't have time to. If a movie this short has this much time to dedicate to mundanity of daily life while waiting for the husband to come back, then there just needed to be more plot. Still, it's a very pretty film and one I'm glad I watched.

Mythiot: *no writeup submitted*

Karo: There's this woodcutter who is living in the idyllic countryside with his daughter, yet he still wants more. So when a mysterious stranger offers him riches, he does what any good father would do: he lovingly chops off his daughter's arms so she can be raped by the devil, and thus our story begins.
The first thing you notice is the unique visual style, which is astounding and beautiful. Now, in a short film, the style alone would be enough to carry it, but this is feature length. When you look at an animation technique for over an hour it loses some of its novelty if there is nothing behind it to back it up. Unfortunately, that is largely the case here.
Most of the characters are bizarre and hard to relate to, and the movie plods along with not a whole lot happening for large sections of the film. Not to mention there were so many scenes that were, for lack of a better word, fetishistic. Would you believe that projectile squirting of breast milk was something that happened on multiple occasions?
It just feels like the film is missing something more than a pair of upper body appendages, and I'm not sure I'd really ever want to see it again.

Red: When I saw the title of this movie I wasn't sure it would be quite so literal. But in the theme of horrible parents being prevalent on this list, she got one of the short sticks. Inadvertently sold by her father, her fathers says screw it and isn't content just to have her sold, but is willing to do whatever to make her an acceptable sale to a literal demon, including having her hands cut off. Its brutal, its horrible, and we get a whole movie of terrible things happening to her as a devil decides she just needs to die instead of being made unclean. Its horrible, but she does meet up with a couple good people and get an oddly happy ending.

Inviso: This wasnt grossly objectionable, but this was absolutely the kind of movie that was never going to do well for me as a viewer. At 75 minutes, it still feels WAY too long, because the pacing is SO slow. Every event in the film takes for-goddamn-ever to happen, and its not even told in an interesting art style. The whole movie is animated in this artistic sketchpad style, and the end result is characters that I cant invest in as a viewer, because I can barely envision them, given the choppiness of their designs in this animation. Also, the movie is called Girl Without Hands, but because of the animation, the back half of the film both treats her physical capabilities like she has hands, and the animation doesnt take away from that assessment. Hell, when she suddenly grows her hands back at the end of the film, its likeshe already had those, pretty much. Finally, the plot was just dull. This felt like a straight telling of a fairy tale, whichtheres a reason Disney had to add a lot of flashy music and animation, and happy endings. Fairy tales are not conducive to full feature-length animated films, and this movie proves it.

Ermine: Annnnnd now we get to the worst film on this list.
I'll just go ahead and say it. The animation sucks. Oftentimes it's difficult to even tell or see what's going on but that's not even the biggest problem with the film. I just hated the Young Girl. I don't even know how it was possible for a film like this, but god I hated her. And who the hell on the direction team thought it was a good idea to get their breast-squeezing fetish into the film. GOTTA SEE THE GIRL SQUEEZE HER BREASTS A BUNCH SO WE CAN SEE THE MILK SQUIRT OUT EVERYWHERE! Love that! Yeah yeah yeah love that so much. Seriously, go fuck yourself movie.
Also what the fuck was the point of the fawn? The girl has a baby with the prince and the prince goes off to war... and the girl can't give her baby milk because she struggles to hold it with her hands... okay... I mean there are ways to work around that, but sure.
But she REALLY wants to give milk so they get her a baby fawn to feed from her breasts... okay... that's fucking weird, but sure.
Oh! But now the other guy needs to come in and STAB the fawn to death... for absolutely no reason at all! OK? COOL!
Oh! And now the girl can feed her baby from her breasts.
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
What the actual...
???
HUH?
Why?!
Also why does this devil have such a hard-on for ruining this girl's life, it wasn't her who made the deal, it was her dad. Ruin his life instead. Because she's so pure! Yeah no.
Oh yeah, did we really need to see her and her son shitting? Why do these movies have such a hard on for nudity and showing this kind of crap (literally)?
One of the worst movies I've ever seen, and I've seen Flushed Away and Paranorman.