We watched Poupelle over the summer without realizing that it is a kind-of-perfect Halloween movie. After all, it's hard to catch that from the title, which is appropriate in its own way for a film that features a young boy's relationship with an animated (in multiple senses) trash spirit--well, almost appropriate, assuming p and b are allophones in Japanese?!? Geeky asides aside, the trash-man materializes from a falling star on Halloween night. This sentient, if shy and confused, gentle creature is at first accepted as just one of the costumed revelers in a truly carnivalesque explosion of music and color amidst the otherwise drab cityscape. Without a doubt the most striking quality of this film is the contrast between the vibrant colors of the characters and their surroundings and the oppressive smog overhanging the city that completely shuts out day and night alike in a perpetual grey. The plot too is interesting-the trash-man develops as a father figure for the boy, whose dad, a somewhat incompetent member of a group resisting the city's rulers, was recently killed by them. This group asserts that there is in fact a sky beyond the fog. Poupelle thus shares the common environmental ethos of Japanese animae, but mixes it with themes about the persecution of religious minorities in an interesting way. Definitely worth a watch, especially as an example of the aesthetic possibilities of an animation style which eschews the hyper-realism of most current American efforts.