An Oversimplification of Her Beauty

One evening in 2006, the young American filmmaker Terence Nance receives a phone call from the woman he had been trying to build up a relationship with for some time. She can’t come. He starts having his doubts. Why did she back out?

Open-hearted, sharp and playful, Nance tries in An Oversimplification of Her Beauty to trace all the elements of his feelings about the evening back to their true origins. Fantasies, feelings and memories roll over the screen in the form of documentary footage, live action and a wide range of animation styles. And in addition there are the inevitable questions that the maker must pose: How well does he know himself? Is he not being deceived by his own feelings?

For a phenomenon that everybody occasionally experiences, the starting point for An Oversimplification of Her Beauty is surprisingly seldom the subject of films. What goes on in your body as you experience emotions at a certain point? And how ‘sure’ is that moment really? –Rotterdam