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I love this movie so much

Truly Dreadful Film

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

As somebody who's very fond of Russian animation, Rusalka(aka Mermaid) has to be one of the most beautiful and fascinating of any Russian animated film or short. The high point is the animation, it is hard to put into words how truly gorgeous it is, not only is an animation style unlike any seen before in animation(oil paints on glass) but every frame and movement flows so smoothly it's almost dream-like. There is so much atmosphere in the setting, and the vast details and the way the colours are used were a visual feast. The music is soothing, almost like it's coming from a distance, and wisely sparingly used, while the sound effects are truly evocative and add so much to that magical dream-like effect. While it is understandable why anybody would have difficulty following the story(particularly if you are unfamiliar with the Slavic folklore tale it's based on), it wasn't a problem for me and the hauntingly gentle mood conveyed in the short is really to be admired, while the ending was incredibly poignant and stayed with me for a while after. The characters are very well drawn and expressively characterised(facial expressions and gestures rather than vocal, particularly good in this regard was for Rusalka) and carry Rusalka beautifully. In conclusion, a breathtaking Russian short film. 10/10 Bethany Cox

a perfect film. seems be a too large definition but it has all pieces for be more than wonderful animation, pure Aleksandr Petrov high work but a magnificent story who remember the Russian mythology, the air of Orthodox Church,who presents , in wise manner, the temptation and the love in its so different nuances as not exactly as show but as touching source of love sense. it has the gift to impress in a profound manner. to give a form of beauty who could be not just aesthetic but perfect lesson about important things. it seems be enough - it is one of Aleksander Petrov short animation. but, like each of his films, it is not only animation. maybe a testimony about force and delicacy, about heart and fascination of existence. presented after a work who could be , for many from us, unrealistic, a sacrifice itself.

"Rusalka" was another short masterpiece directed by the great Aleksandr Petrov: Just like his other works, "Rusalka" possess a magnificent beauty that hardly could be compared with anything that I've seen before, expressing with lyricism and captivating imagery a fascinating story.The quality of the animation is outstanding beyond words, being every single frame of this short a great work of art, with an almost dreamlike use of colors and shapes, capturing perfectly well the equally ethereal nature of the plot.This is a great animated film, that has to be seen to be believed. My review isn't enough to make this short any justice, being my main recommendation to any viewer to see with their own eyes "Rusalka" to confirm how wonderful it is.

I don't think I really need to tell you that 'Mermaid (1997)' is a visual masterpiece. This is, after all, Aleksandr Petrov, whose exquisite skill with oil paints on glass is unsurpassed by any animator ever to have worked in the medium {though I did recently discover a worthy rival in Alexei Karaev, with ''The Lodgers of an Old House (1987)'}. The wonderful thing about Petrov's work – from 'Cow (1989)' to 'My Love (2006)' – is that sense of timelessness about the animation, evoking the eternal bliss of our dreams and memories. However, his films are so focused upon visual storytelling that the stories themselves are often convoluted beyond comprehensibility, an issue not aided by Petrov's insistence upon adapting novel-length literature. The problem with 'Mermaid' is that it only allows itself ten minutes to develop a complex breadth of ideas, leaving the plot so vague and ambiguous as to be almost disposable. That said, this is not a film you're watching for its story, anyway.An elderly monk, doomed to a life of solidarity after a lost love about whom he still dreams, is training a young apprentice by the riverside. This young boy is overjoyed to discover a beautiful mermaid residing beside his shack, and the pair spend much time playing merrily in the water. But the old monk senses in this mermaid the spirit of his lost love, and strictly forbids the friendship. Everything that tales place after this is a little hazy, but there's an almighty storm, a vicious swirl of wind and water and a conclusion that sees crude wooden crosses mournfully lining the shore. 'Mermaid' provided the second of four Oscar nominations for its famed animator, though it lost this particular statue to Pixar, whose 'Geri's Game (1997)' is incidentally my favourite short film from the studio. Petrov would, however, snare the Oscar a few years later with his masterpiece, 'The Old Man and the Sea (1999).' However unintelligible the story, this is a marvellous visual treat that is worth watching at least twice.