SWEET LIKE LEMONS

Short Talk with with Jenny Jokela (director)

Animation / UK, Finland / 2023 / 5'31“

BEST ANIMATION FILM Category

21st IN THE PALACE International Short Film Festival 2024

Synopsis: Sweet Like Lemons is a visual reflection on getting out of a harmful relationship and moving on. The title is a play on the saying “when life gives you lemons make lemonade”, only in this case there is no lemonade to be made but the lemons still taste sweeter than what you left behind.

Biography: Jenny Jokela (1990) is a Finnish animation director and artist based in Edinburgh, UK. She graduated from MA Animation at Royal College of Art, London, in 2017. Her graduation film Barbeque (2017) won multiple awards including Cristal for best graduation film at Annecy 2018. Jenny works as a self-employed animation director.

Jenny Jokela, Director

Jenny Jokela (director): Most of the film is happening inside of the woman character's head as she is working through that kind of trauma from leaving this harmful relationship behind and my thinking was at least she knows what has happened between them, so we don't need to see exactly what the man has done, so instead we are visualizing her emotions and how he made her feel so that's why it’s constant morphing and not looking natural.

Raya Hristova (author): The floor in the beginning when she remembers this relationship is colorful and then you show how she walks up and then it is black and white patterns. What is the meaning behind of this?

Jenny Jokela (director): I originally wanted to have this kind of checkered floor because it was a symbology of their relationship of playing games. Then for like color reasons I chose to make it more beige in the beginning and have it more disco in times, but it’s about symbology of an unhealthy relationship.

Raya Hristova (author): Why did you decide to give it the name SWEET LIKE LEMONS? Why did you use this metaphor?

Jenny Jokela (director): I was thinking and for me at least when leaving some unhealthy relationship, you have both good and bad memories and you carry that pain, but you also feel sweeter being out of it, so it's like a bittersweet feeling. It's a little bit self-therapy film, I found it helps me work through my stuff in my head, this subject it's difficult for me sometimes to put into words and it helps me clarify my own thoughts just getting it down on paper so it's quite therapeutic and I feel like I made it for myself.

Author's View:

SWEET LIKE LEMONS is a beautiful concept that portrays the experiences of the director of the work. According to her, it is a self-therapy film, the realization of which helped her to work through the moments she had left after being in an unhealthy relationship.

The title reveals the intention of the picture. There are no sweet lemons, but the emotions from leaving such a relationship are intermixed and contradictory. A real bittersweet feeling.

We can observe the play of colors, the nuances of what is happening, the change of palettes, as well as the transformation of forms and the image of the man in the character's head. It reflects the way he made her feel. Visually we are tracing the thread of the play of the two former partners, their impermanence and changeability. 

This animation reminds one of a theatrical play, that unravels a complex type of connection with its pitfalls, highlights and down sides.