VOTD: 'Meet Buck'

It's a tale as old as time: Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy meets girl's father, girl's father hates boy. In this French animated short, titled Meet Buck, the boy happens to be a Back to the Future t-shirt-wearing deer. And the girl is a regular human with a hunting-obsessed father. As you might guess, their first meeting does not go well. Watch the film after the jump. (Don't worry if you don't speak French, as there is no dialogue.)

Frankly, I don't know that I'd be too thrilled either if my daughter were dating a deer. To be fair, the characters do exist in a universe that includes other anthropomorpic animals — though in my opinion, that just leads to other, more profound ethical questions about when it's okay to date animals and when it's okay to eat them.

Troubling moral issues aside, Meet Buck a charming, lively film. The computer-generated animation has an appealingly hand-painted look that involves visible "brush strokes" and vivid colors that look even better in motion. The chase sequence (which constitutes most of the film) has a nice sense of energy and momentum.

The team behind Meet Buck includes Denis Bouyer, Yann De Preval, Vincent E Sousa, Laurent Monneron, Yannis Dumoutiers and Julien Begault. They're close friends and collaborators of the creators of Salesman Pete, a similarly playful animated short about a dorky salesman who's really a powerful secret agent. As asianseverywhere reports, the artists met at the French digital filmmaking school Supinfocom, and are hoping to create a feature at some point. Check out Salesmen Pete here– and keep an eye out for that weird sentient steak figure who appears in both films.

Thanks to /Film reader Lascelles L for the tip!