Rob Munday

Winner of a SXSW Grand Jury Award, the Animated Encounters Grand Prix and a Cartoon d’Or at Cartoon Forum, on the festival circuit back in 2012/13 it felt like there was only one film on everyone’s lips. Emma De Swaef and Marc James Roels’ Oh Willy… set a new bar for stop-motion in short film and since its success we’ve seen a few films trying to emulate its wooly aesthetic and critical acclaim. The duo’s follow-up film, Ce Magnifique Gâteau (This Magnificent Cake), built on its predecessor’s achievements by screening at Cannes, winning an award at Annecy and being nominated for the ‘Best Short Film – Animation’ Award at the Césars. An animated anthology set in colonial Africa in the late 19th century, This Magnificent Cake confirmed De Swaef and Roels as two of the most-exciting talents in the world of independent animation.

Before we jump in and examine what makes This Magnificent Cake such a unique viewing experience, lets address the 44-minute elephant in the room, the film’s duration. Like the Academy, we’ve always held the opinion that to be considered a short, a film needs to have a running time of 40-minutes or less – as we state on our Submit page. So at 44-minutes, De Swaef and Roels’ film should really be considered mid-length, not short. However, its anthology structure makes it feel like a series of short films stitched together and ultimately we felt that our restrictions could show a little bend, when it comes to filmmaking of this standard.

The king’s advisors try to help rid him of his hiccups.

Originally written as a 30-min short, the length of the piece crept up after its creators started improvising with actors and adding shots to make every scene work. Admitting, in conversation with S/W back in 2018, that the run-time of their film had been described as “nightmarish’ and ‘suicidal”, the pair decided to make it “the length it needs to be” after concluding that it couldn’t be shorter or longer, to work. “We hope the time is right for the industry to be more flexible towards newer formats”, the duo reveal as they give credit to the programmers who found a place for it in their line-ups.

A period piece which follows five different characters – a troubled king, a middle-aged Pygmy working in a luxury hotel, a failed businessman on an expedition, a lost porter and a young army deserter – De Swaef and Roels explained that the 19th century colonial Africa setting provided “an inspiring arena to put our characters in, an environment that was simultaneously exotic and enticing but also brutal and unforgiving”. 

While the film’s aesthetic is undoubtedly the standout element of the piece, De Swaef and Roels’ style has been replicated but never bettered, there’s also some impressive storytelling on show here. Although This Magnificent Cake wasn’t originally intended to be divided into chapters, the directorial duo had so many ideas for characters and scenes it ultimately seemed like the perfect way to merge them all together. It’s more than a gimmick though, there’s a real cohesion to it all and by watching the individual threads you get a real sense of the bigger picture the pair are trying to paint here.

This Magnificent Cake is told in De Swaef & Roels’ trademark needle-felt stop-motion style.

Despite those narrative strengths, it feels impossible to discuss This Magnificent Cake and not talk about its visuals. From speaking to so many stop-motion filmmakers over the years, I have a good understanding of the work that goes into putting together a 10-minute short using these techniques, so for De Swaef and Roels to create a 44-minute film that is consistently outstanding in the aesthetic department is a real testament to their craft.

Though the pair are quite modest about their filmmaking style, describing it as “what naturally happens when we work together” – combining Roels’ experience shooting live-action with De Swaef’s puppet design – they also admit that with Oh Willy… such a standout piece they are constantly challenging theirselves to improve and “outdo” that previous film.

“We’ll have to wow people with the stories and characters rather than just the look”

“We came up with a lip-sync system that would double as a technique to get more variation in the facial expressions”, the duo explain as we discuss their production. “We also included a lot of water and moving mist animation, things that would push us to rethink what we could do with the technique but still have it feel right. I don’t think we could ‘do’ any other style if we tried. We realise the novelty impact of Oh Willy… isn’t there anymore, so we’ll have to wow people with the stories and characters rather than just the look”.

With This Magnificent Cake a success, it feels like the film laid the foundations for their next project, another stop-motion anthology, with the pair directing chapter one in Netflix’s The House. With De Swaef explaining that the experience of working on this project helped take their craft to “another level”, we can’t wait to see what they achieve in their next project. Surely the world is now ready for a feature in their trademark style?