26/06/2024 - Nienke Deutz’s Animafest Zagreb Grand Prix Short Film winner follows a lonely middle-aged woman who struggles to relax in a paradise-like summer resort

The sun shimmers its majestic rays upon The Miracle Hotel’s broad beach, which almost feels like heaven, but which is, indeed, a place on Earth. It’s a paradise which everyone would like to visit, but Irma (voiced by Isabelle Van Hecke), the protagonist of Dutch filmmaker’s Nienke Deutz’s The Miracle, which triumphed in Animafest Zagreb’s Short Films Competition, seems to be the only person who doesn’t truly belong there.

It’s from this destination that Irma calls her sister via video chat. The latter is interested in Irma’s stay in this exclusive hotel, but the film’s heroine isn’t calling to boast. She misses people, affirmation, intimacy and physical touch. At least she can talk to her sister. But once again, the connection is lost – literally, this time round, as their call is cut off. And Irma finds herself alone.

Holidays aren’t as fun as you’d imagine when you can’t find the right person to go with and you end up travelling on your own. Irma can’t even find pleasure in masturbating anymore. Deutz’s film explores these loneliness-related nuances, which can sometimes be exacerbated among people sharing time with companions. Using a blend of multi-dimensional stop-motion animation and painted figures on foil, the director presents an original aesthetic, creating a warm and breezy atmosphere in which Irma’s solitude seems even more glaring. We begin to wonder if this place is actually real. Only later, thanks to the director placing us in Irma’s shoes, does it become evident that there aren’t any miracles in this miraculous venue. It’s just another lifeless hotel, which boasts its own colours and exclusiveness, but which only offers a veil of real emotion and tenderness.

Furthermore, the human figures in the film are shown as transparent, meaning that the audience can plainly see what lies behind them. It’s an apt metaphor, implying that none of them are actually there: the hotel is a threshold to escape from a mundane reality, detached from Irma’s run-of-the-mill everyday life. Thanks to Deutz’s storytelling, The Miracle reflects our own holiday experiences, where we manoeuvre between our expectations and reality in this ethereal one-to-two-week period. 

For the audience, this soothing, dream-like resort is reminiscent of the fancy hotel from Apple TV+’s Mexican show, Acapulco, known for its effervescent storytelling. For the main heroine, the Miracle Hotel becomes a gilded cage, a trap which almost prevents her from sleeping at night. It’s an antinomy that haunts Irma: her stay should lead to convalescence, not mental breakdown.

Of course, summer vacations do briefly relieve us of our work anxieties, personal-life fears and other everyday concerns, but at what cost, if we have no one to share this serenity with? Irma is a single, middle-aged woman who’s insecure about her body, lacking in love, and whose face is marked by suffering and weariness. She knows she’s only getting older, and she would like to share the rest of her life with someone (it would be a nice way to make a real change, wouldn’t it?). Alas, going on holiday alone gradually changes the way she perceives such places: they’re no longer vacation sanctuaries. Eventually, we sympathise with the protagonist: even if we’ve never been on holiday alone, or we did but had a good time, we’ve all known loneliness and a lack of love. And we really want her to leave The Miracle.