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verstappensrealwife · 7 months

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Home is you - Fernando Alonso x Reader

fluff.

age-gap. not specifically mentioned but the reader is younger.

approx. 1000 words

fernando alonso masterlist - here. f1 masterlist - here.

Seated in the luxurious confines of his private jet, en route to Bahrain for the electrifying Grand Prix season opener, you found yourself ensconced in a cocoon of anticipation and desire. Across from you lounged the man who ignited flames of passion within your soul, his intense gaze igniting a firestorm of longing and yearning deep within you. As you gazed out of the window, ensnared by the mesmerising spectacle of clouds stretching endlessly across the cerulean expanse, his voice, velvety and laden with desire, pierced through the tranquil ambiance.

“Go on a date with me,” he murmured huskily beside you, his words dripping with an intoxicating blend of sincerity and playful allure.

You turned to him, a soft laugh escaping your lips at the unexpected proposition. “Pardon?” you replied, your voice laced with amusement and a hint of teasing.

“Please~ go on a date with me?” he pleaded, his smile infused with the heady scent of whiskey that hung in the air, a testament to his valiant efforts to ease his nerves during the flight.

Amused by his endearing persistence, you leaned in closer, revelling in the magnetic pull between you. “I don’t know if my dad will approve of you, sir,” you teased, a mischievous glint dancing in your eyes.

“What!” he exclaimed, his offence giving way to a grin of delight. “Let me talk to your dad, sweetheart, I’m sure I could convince him.”

After a brief pause, he regarded you with a dreamy expression, his eyes alight with adoration. “You’re pretty,” he declared softly, his gaze tracing the contours of your face with reverence. “D- Do you have a boyfriend, pretty?” he hiccupped slightly, his smile widening with each passing moment.

You nodded, a tender smile playing on your lips. “A husband, actually,” you replied, your tone infused with affection and determination.

His brow furrowed in confusion, his expression a mixture of disbelief and jealousy. “Leave him, be with me!” he urged, his words slurred with the remnants of alcohol. “Who is this man?” he demanded, his concern palpable.

With a knowing smile, you retrieved your phone, turning the screen towards him to reveal his own reflection staring back at him. “Wh- Wait, I am your husband!” he exclaimed, realisation dawned on him. “So can we go out on the date I planned?”

You nodded in agreement, squeezing his hand affectionately before attempting to release it. However, he held on tightly, his grip a reassuring anchor in the swirling sea of emotions.

Later, in the privacy of the opulent hotel room, he began to sober up (barely), the lingering effects of alcohol fading away as he prepared for the evening ahead. With meticulous care, he adorned himself in his finest attire, his efforts a testament to his unwavering devotion to you. As you emerged from the bathroom, your beauty was enhanced by the artful application of makeup, his breath caught in his throat, his heart swelling with an overwhelming surge of desire.

“Whoa… Hola Cariño,” he joked, his voice husky with desire as he approached you, his hands tracing the curves of your body with electrifying precision. “I could just cancel dinner, then we could skip right to dessert?”

You blushed, a playful glint dancing in your eyes. “Shut up,” you countered, a coy smile playing on your lips. “But no— I just dressed up all nice for you— so you are gonna wine and dine me.” With a gentle press of your hands against his chest, you planted a tender kiss on his cheek, his grin widening as he playfully smacked your ass before guiding you towards the door, anticipation burning like a blazing inferno between you.

Under the soft glow of twinkling fairy lights strung overhead, you and your partner find yourselves nestled in a cozy corner of the enchanting garden café. The air is still alive in the evening, with the melody of chirping birds and the gentle rustle of leaves, lending an ethereal quality to the evening.

As you sip on glasses of sparkling champagne, your fingers intertwined with Fernando's, you can't help but marvel at the sheer magic of the moment. Across the table, his eyes sparkle with affection, mirroring the starlight above as he leans in closer, his breath mingling with yours in a sweet symphony of intimacy.

With a playful twinkle in their eye, your partner reaches for a delicate rose nestled in a vase on the table, presenting it to you with a flourish. "For the most beautiful woman I've ever set my eyes on," He whispers, his voice a tender caress against your ear.

Your heart swells with warmth as you accept the flower, its petals soft beneath your fingertips. "Thank you," you murmur, your voice filled with gratitude and love.

Together, you share laughter and stories, each moment infused with a sense of joy and wonder. The world fades away as you lose yourselves in each other's company, the hours slipping by unnoticed in the embrace of your love.

As the night deepens, he rises from his seat, extending a hand towards you with a smile. "May I have this dance?" he asks, his eyes sparkling with mischief and longing.

You accept with a smile, rising gracefully to your feet as he leads you to a makeshift dance floor bathed in the soft glow of moonlight. With gentle movements and whispered promises, you sway together in perfect harmony, lost in the rhythm of the music and the embrace of each other's arms.

In that moment, time stands still, and all that exists is the two of you, wrapped in a cocoon of love and affection. With every step, every touch, you feel your bond deepening, your souls intertwining in a dance as old as time itself.

As the song draws to a close, you find yourselves reluctant to part, the magic of the evening lingering like a sweet, lingering dream.

el fin

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dweemeister · 4 months

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Robot Dreams (2023, Spain/France)

There exists an assumption that one has to be an animator in order to direct an animated film. While most cinephiles might reflexively point to Wes Anderson (2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, 2018’s Isle of Dogs), I think Isao Takahata (1988’s Grave of the Fireflies, 1991’s Only Yesterday) the exemplar here. Even so, a non-animator taking the reins of an animated movie is rare. Into that fold steps Pablo Berger, in this adaptation of Sara Varon’s graphic novel Robot Dreams. Moved after reading Varon’s work in 2010, Berger acquired Varon’s “carte blanche” permission to make a 2D animated adaptation however he saw fit. Like the graphic novel, Berger’s Robot Dreams is also dialogue-free.

Beginning production on Robot Dreams proved difficult. Berger originally teamed with Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon (2009’s The Secret of Kells, 2020’s Wolfwalkers) to make Robot Dreams, but these plans fell wayside when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. His schooling in how to make an animated film would come quickly. Despite an increased appetite for Spanish animation worldwide (2019’s Klaus, 2022’s Unicorn Wars), poor distribution and marketing of domestically-made animated movies has often meant Spanish animators have roved around Europe looking for work. With a pandemic sending those Spanish animators home, Berger and his Spanish and French producers set up “pop-up studios” in Madrid and Pamplona, purchased the infrastructure and space needed to make an animated feature, and recruited and hired animators. Berger’s admiration of animated film fuses the lessons of silent film acting (Berger made a gorgeous silent film in 2012’s Blancanieves; in interviews, Berger cites Charlie Chaplin’s movies as having the largest influence on Robot Dreams, alongside Takahata’s films) to result in one of the most emotionally honest films of the decade thus far – animated or otherwise.

Somewhere in Manhattan in the late 1980s in a world populated entirely of anthropomorphized animals, we find ourselves in Dog’s apartment. Dog, alone in this world, consuming yet another TV dinner, is channel surfing late one evening. He stumbles upon a commercial advertising a robot companion. Intrigued, he orders the robot companion and, with some difficulty, assembles Robot. The two become fast friends as they romp about New York City over a balmy summer, complete with walks around their neighborhood and Central Park, street food, trips to Coney Island, and roller blading along to the groovy tunes of Earth, Wind & Fire. At summer’s end, an accident sees the involuntary separation of Dog and Robot, endangering, for all that the viewer can assume, the most meaningful friendship in Dog’s life and Robot’s brief time of existence.

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If you have not seen the film yet, let me address a popular perception early on in this piece. Set in a mostly-analog 1980s, Robot Dreams contains none of the agonizing over artificial intelligence or automatons in fashion in modern cinema. There is no commentary about how technology frays an individual’s connections to others. Robot is a rudimentary creation, closer to a sentient grade school science project than a Data or T-1000.

So what is Robot Dreams saying instead? Principally, it is about the loving bonds of friendship – how a friend can provide comfort and company, how they uplift the best parts of your very being. For Robot, the entirety of their life prior to the aforementioned accident (something that I, for non-viewers, am trying not to spoil as Robot Dreams’ emotional power is fully experienced if you know as little as possible) has been one of complete estival bliss. Robot, in due time, discovers that one of the most meaningful aspects of friendship is that such relationships will eventually conclude – a fundamental part of life. And for Dog, Robot’s entrance into his life allows him to realize that, yes, he can summon the courage to connect with his fellow animals, realizing his self-worth. Perhaps Dog gives up addressing the accident a little too easily, but the separation of friends has a way of complicating emotions and provoking peculiar reactions.

On occasion, Robot Dreams’ spirit reminds me of Charlie Chaplin’s silent feature film period (1921-1936) – in which Chaplin, at the height of his filmmaking prowess, most successfully wove together slapstick comedy and pathos. On paper, pathos and slapstick should not mix, but Chaplin was the master of combining the two. No wonder Berger fully acknowledges the influence of his favorite Chaplin work, City Lights (1931), here.

Across Robot Dreams, Berger inserts an absurd visual humor that works both because almost all of the characters are animals and despite the fact almost everyone is an animal. A busking octopus in the New York City subway? Check. The image of pigs playing on the beach while sunburnt to a blazing red? You bet. A dancing dream sequence where one of our lead characters finds himself in The Wizard of Oz performing Busby Berkeley-esque choreography on the Yellow Brick Road? Why not? Much of Chaplin’s silent film humor didn’t come from his Little Tramp character, but the silliness, ego, and/or absentmindedness of all those surrounding the Tramp. In City Lights, humor also came from the rough-and-tumble edges of urban America. Such is the case, too, in Robot Dreams, with its blemished, trash-strewn depiction of late ‘80s New York (credit must also go to the sound mix, as they perfectly capture how ambiently noisy a big city can be).

Amid all that comedy, Berger nails the balance between the pathos and the hilarity – pushing too far in either direction would easily undermine the other. The film’s melancholy shows up in ostensibly happy moments and places of recreation: a realization during a rooftop barbeque lunch, the emptiness of a shuttered Coney Island beach in the winter, and an afternoon of kiting in Central Park. It captures how our thoughts of erstwhile or involuntarily separated friends come to us innocuously, in places that stir memories that we might, in our present company, might not speak of aloud.

As the film’s third character, New York City (where Berger lived for a decade) is a global cultural capital, a citywide theater of dreams, a skyscraper-filled signature to the American Dream. To paraphrase Sinatra, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. But it tends to grind those dreams into dust. The city’s bureaucratic quagmire is lampooned here, as is its reputation for mean-spirited or jaded locals. Robot Dreams also depicts the visual and socioeconomic differences between the city’s boroughs. With such a jumble of folks of different life stations mashed together, Dog’s people-watching, er, animal-watching during his loneliest moments makes him feel the full intensity of his social isolation. With Robot, however, Dog has a naïve companion that he can show the best of the city to. Robot has no understanding of passive-aggressive or outright hostile behavior (see: Robot hilariously not understanding what a middle finger salute is – the only objectionable scene if you are considering showing this to younger viewers). Within this city of contradictions, Dog and Robot’s love is here to stay.

Though he is no animator, his experience in guiding Spanish actresses Ángela Molina, Maribel Verdú, and Macarena García in Blancanieves through a silent film was valuable. In animated film, there is a tendency towards overexaggerating emotions. But with Robot Dreams’ close adaptation of the graphic novel’s ligne claire style and the nature of Robot’s face, the typical level of exaggeration in animation could not fly in Robot Dreams. Berger and storyboard artist Maca Gil (2022’s My Father’s Dragon, the 2023 Peanuts special One-of-a-Kind Marcie) made few alterations to the storyboards, fully knowing how they wished to frame the film, and hoping to convey the film’s emotions with the facial subtlety seen in the graphic novel. Character designer Daniel Fernandez Casas (Klaus, 2024’s IF) accomplishes this with a minimum of lines to outline characters’ bodies and faces. Meanwhile, art director José Luis Ágreda (2018’s Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles) and animation director Benoît Féroumont (primarily a graphic novelist) visually translated Sara Varon’s graphic novel using flat colors and a lack of shading to convey background and character depth (one still needs shading, of course, to convey lights and darks of an interior or exterior).

Robot Dreams’ nomination for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature this year was one of the most pleasant surprises of the 96th Academy Awards. In North America, Robot Dreams’ distributor, Neon, has pursued an inexplicable distribution and marketing strategy of not allowing the film a true theatrical release until months after the end of the last Oscars. The film was available for a one-night special screening in select theaters in and near major North American cities the Wednesday before the Academy Awards. And only now (as of the weekend of May 31, 2024), Neon will release Robot Dreams this weekend in two New York City theaters, the following weekend in and around Los Angeles, with few other locations confirmed – well after interest to watch the film theatrically piqued in North America.

Alongside Neon’s near-nonexistent distribution and marketing of Jonas Poher Rasmussen's animated documentary Flee (2021, Denmark), one has to question Neon’s commitment to animated features and whether the company has a genuine interest in showing their animated acquisitions to people outside major North American cities. This is distributional malpractice and maddeningly disrespectful from one of the most acclaimed independent distributors of the last decade.

In Robot Dreams, Pablo Berger and his crew made perhaps the best animated feature of the previous calendar year. Robot Dreams might not have the artistic sumptuousness of the best anime films today, nor the digital polish one expects from the work of a major American animation studio. By film’s end, its simple, accessible style cannot hide its irrepressible emotional power. Its conclusion speaks to all of us who silently wonder about close friends long left to the past, their absence filled only by memory.

My rating: 8.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog. Half-points are always rounded down.

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#Robot Dreams #Pablo Berger #Sara Varon #Fernando Franco #Daniel Fernandez Casas #Benoît Feroumont #José Luis Ágreda #Maca Gil #Ibon Cormenzana #Ignasi Estapé #Sandra Tapia Diaz #Best Animated Feature #Oscars #96th Academy Awards #My Movie Odyssey

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