What is the film about?

Produced as part of the 14th edition of Hothouse.

Drawn to unorthodox materials and themes, Mochi Lin works with diaphanous stockings and acetate to depict courtship in the insect world. Her musical composition provides the soundtrack for a startling pas de deux. Stop-motion haiku on the themes of coupledom, confinement and decapitation!

A little background information...

Mochi Lin (Photo: Fannie-Laurence Dubé-Dupuis, courtesy of NFB)

The Last Tango is inspired by my childhood experience. When I was nine years old, I found a wounded female praying mantis in the wild, and I kept her as a pet in a transparent cookie box. Every day, I would take care of her, clean her ‘cage’ and fetch all kinds of bugs to feed her. I was obsessed with observing her through the box—how she would brutally yet elegantly dismember and devour the prey that was to her mouth. However, later, when I took her on ‘walks,’ I noticed she was behaving in an unusual way outside the box and decided to let her go. It was around that time that I first discovered the gore and violence in nature, the disparity between the different genders of praying mantises, and how confinement can lead to abnormal behaviour. When I saw this year’s Hothouse theme was ‘Small Things Considered,’ this was the first image that came to my mind, so I decided to make a short film about it.

How was the film made?

Stop-motion fabrication is usually quite time-consuming. We had a really tight timeframe for this project, so I wanted to experiment with simple, unconventional yet effective materials. I finally arrived on stockings, as they evoke an ethereal look that blurs the mantis world and the human world. Every other material and stylistic decision was made to achieve this goal.

The Last Tango is a single one-minute long-shot of stop-motion animation. The primary materials used to make the puppets and plants were diaphanous stockings, acetate and wires.

The camera movement was done physically, and the colours were achieved with lighting and in post-production. The ending segment was shot with a real fish tank set in front of a green screen in studio. I also composed and recorded the music. I played the piano, and we hired a violinist and a bandoneon player to create the tango-flavoured music. This film was made through NFB’s Hothouse program, and I received a lot of conceptual and technical support from the whole team.