Le Lézard: A Cool Narrative of Quiet Despair and Casual Exhaustion

Paul Capdenat’s no-budget two-minute experimental animation Le Lézard brings a light touch to a fraught experience. The story of a woman plagued by the omnipresence of the lizard waiting on her ceiling, it hangs heavy with grim, silent dread. 

Alexandrea Meyer plays the unnamed woman who introduces herself by first assuring us that she is not an anxious person, lest we not take the disruption of the lizard seriously. The lizard insists on its innocuity with its childlike pink and brown colouring but its watchful eyes are inescapable, its stop-motion animated movements glaring. 

Her frustration teeters on the edge of panic when the exhausted tube of toothpaste cannot yield enough for her needs, the supermarket hums in routine expectation of decision, the elevator demands certainty. On a day when an animated lizard will not do anything, and will not leave you alone, every click and every ding is a climbing number with sanity on the line. 

A remarkable film that churns up an emotional richness in less than two minutes, it employs sound and camerawork and editing to riveting effect. The editing choices are striking, stylish, and do a lot of the heavy lifting in creating density across the short linear timeline. Sound design maintains a steady level of white noise, neutral but it impresses its potential to become oppressive. The walls of the cream bedroom are bare. Intrusions of the larger world are so faint they may as well not exist if not for the horizon outside her window, the inviting reflection in her window panes, her mirror. But they only deepen her isolation. All there really exists are the woman and her taunting companion. His voice—when he finally speaks—is loud, goading, an unassailable conviction and sure purpose in it. She cannot hope to win with rationality against such a consciousness declaring her inadequate. 

Postmodernist in its despair and yet contemporary in its casual, nearly nonchalant resolution, Le Lézard is an impressive work from the start and that deepens with every viewing. 

Watch Short Film Le Lézard