Ah, L'Amour

Ah, L'Amour (1995) is Don Hertzfeldt's first 16mm student animated short film, completed at the age of 18 at UC Santa Barbara. Though produced for a beginning film class, the short had a very long life at animation festivals, launching Hertzfeldt into cult status at a young age. In 1998, the short won the Grand Prize Award for "World's Funniest Cartoon" from the HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. The cartoon is a self-parody, told from the point of view of a "bitter filmmaker". In it, a crudely drawn male suitor is subjected to exaggerated bloody violence from all the unreasonably emotional and psychotic women he approaches, with each vignette closing as the paper physically crumples up the characters in a frustrated heap. The soundtrack is entirely guitar music, performed by Hertzfeldt on a boom box in his dorm room.