What happens when an avant-garde artist no longer considers himself avant-garde? This is a question raised by “Bob Spit: We don’t like people”, but it is far from being the only one. As well as being a stop-motion animated documentary about Brazilian cartoonist Angeli, it’s also a psychedelic road movie in which a roving pack of tiny, bloodthirsty Elton Johns set their sights on a punk-rock vigilante trying to reach its creator: Angeli himself. It’s nothing if not a unique premise, but what’s brought to life by writer-director Cesar Cabral proves more compelling as a concept than as an actual film.
“Bob Spit” is most notable for its formal approach, which mixes lively interviews with Angeli with a bizarre, sometimes surreal narrative featuring characters from his comic books. The interview segments are intentionally bare bones, background noise and all, creating an effect that is both lived-in and a bit off-putting. It’s not quite the weird valley, but it does take some getting used to. This no-nonsense approach – sometimes you see the boom mic in the corner of the screen, and at some point the filming stops because nearby construction sounds prove too distracting – ultimately suits the style. anarchy of Angeli.
After being introduced to her, we then meet two of her cartoon creations: the Kowalsi twins, who only exist in Angeli’s mind and attempt to reach her by sending out some sort of psychic distress signal. They live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where water is scarce and violence is common, a place that would have no semblance of order without the film’s namesake: a green vigilante armed with a shotgun with a mohawk, a septum piercing and a devil… careful attitude. The twins know Bob from his comic books, which exist in their corner of this fantasy world as holy scripture – a misconception that Bob himself does not share. (If that’s not meta enough, Bob eventually starts reading a comic about himself that depicts exactly what’s happening to him at that exact moment.)
Angeli first became known for the political cartoons he produced amid his country’s military dictatorship and maintained his punk-rock sensibility in the decades that followed. It continues here, even as he finds himself at a defining moment – with the bulk of his career behind him, the artist ruminates on what has already passed and what is to come. “We Don’t Like People” gives him plenty of room to do just that, with the result being a film that not only deals with the creative process in general but also, in its own way, with the process of aging.
As for the link between creator and creation, Angeli is unequivocal: “I believe that I am Bob Spit”, he says very early on, but with a more clearly defined moral. This caveat comes in handy, considering some of Bob’s more unseemly activities. The film moves back and forth between narrative and interview, with Angeli commenting on what Bob Spit in particular and his work in general means to him as he enters a transitional phase in his life, a phase that seems a lot less certain than those that precede it. .
The focus on Angeli himself risks making this a fan-only affair, though anime buffs will likely enjoy it as much as die-hard Angeli fans. To its advantage, it’s extremely difficult to think of a one-sentence summary of “Bob Spit” that would come close to applying to any other film. (Rithy Panh’s missing image was formally similar but completely different thematically.) Unfortunately, that doesn’t prevent it from often feeling too navel-gazing, and only a certain type of viewer will find itself hooked by the meta-narrative – especially given how much time Bob goes without pants, a streak that reveals his septum isn’t the only body part he’s taken the liberty of piercing.