''Consuming Spirits'' is a 2012 American

animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anim ...

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

directed by Chris Sullivan and his

directorial debut This is a list of film directorial debuts in chronological order. The films and dates referred to are a director's first commercial cinematic release. Many film makers have directed works which were not commercially released, for example early work ...

. Partially autobiographical, the movie released on December 12, 2012 in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and employs a diverse mixture of different animation styles to tell the stories of three different characters and the anguish they face in their everyday lives.

Synopsis

The movie follows the lives of three residents of the fictional town of Magguson, all of whom work at the town's newspaper ''The Daily Suggester''. While at first the interactions between the three people appear to show a superficial working relationship between them, as the movie progresses the viewer learns that there is a deeper relationship between them all and that all of them have hidden secrets.

Cast

* Nancy Andrews as Gentian Violet (voice) *Chris Sullivan as Victor Blue (voice) *Judith Rafael as Mother Beatrice Elastica (voice) * Mary Lou Zelazny as Ida Blue (voice) * Chris Harris as Peabody Shampling (voice) *Robert Levy as Earl Gray (voice)

Reception

Critical reception for ''Consuming Spirits'' has been predominantly positive and the film holds a score of 81 on ''

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

'' (based on 12 reviews) and 89% on ''

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

'' (based on 18 reviews). Despite this, a Swiss site reported that most of the audience left the theater during a showing at the

Fantoche Fantoche is an animation film festival with international participation and takes place each year in the city of Baden, Switzerland. The first Fantoche took place in 1995 with the goal to enrich the Swiss cultural life with an animation film fes ...

animated film festival in

Baden, Switzerland Baden (German for "baths"), sometimes unofficially, to distinguish it from other Badens, called Baden bei Zürich ("Baden near Zürich") or Baden im Aargau ("Baden in the Aargau"), is a town and a municipality in Switzerland. It is the main tow ...

. A reviewer for ''

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

'' recommended the film and called it "emotionally raw, thoroughly original".

Awards

*''Chicago Award'' at the

Chicago International Film Festival The Chicago International Film Festival is an annual film festival held every fall. Founded in 1964 by Michael Kutza, it is the longest-running competitive film festival in North America. Its logo is a stark, black and white close up of the comp ...

(2012, won)

References

External links

* * * * {{rotten tomatoes, consuming_spirits
NY Times
2012 films 2012 drama films 2010s American animated films 2012 animated films American independent films American drama films American avant-garde and experimental films Animated drama films Anifilm award winners 2010s avant-garde and experimental films 2012 independent films 2010s English-language films