Killing Time At Home

There is a website called www.disposablefriends.com from which you can purchase an embryo child person. Stick it into a pot of fast growing zinc and soon enough your new friend emerges. It's quicker, easier and less of a commitment than adoption. After all, when you're bored, you can throw it away.

From such a cynical concept comes a disturbing, exquisitely constructed short animated film.

A lonely old man lives in a lonely old room in a lonely old apartment. There is no narrative, nothing to embellish the sadness of the situation, not that it is needed. The animation speaks loud enough.

The embryo grows into a boy with a baby's head and they play video games and board games and with remote control cars. The old man is enjoying his purchase until something happens, something only he knows, and the boy baby friend is no longer fun.

This is excellence of a rare order.