The Windshield Wiper is a 2021 animated short film (14 minutes) written and directed by Alberto Mielgo.
A man sits and drinks coffee in a cafe somewhere. As the cafe hums with chatter, the man looks at the camera and says "What is love?" The cartoon then shows a series of unconnected vignettes meant to suggest different aspects of what love is. The vignettes include: a man and a woman introduced sitting on a beach, who are revealed to have a tempestuous relationship; a drunken hobo, who in a state of extreme intoxication mistakes a mannequin in a window for a woman that's important to him; a man and a woman in a grocery store, standing right next to each other but strangers, both flitting through the same dating app on their phones; and a man moving into an apartment complex, who catches sight of a pretty neighbor.
Tropes:
- Anthology Film: A short animated version thereof, as the cartoon consists of a series of vignettes loosely related by the theme of love.
- Bookends: The end of the cartoon comes back to the man in the cafe, who again asks "What is love?", and this time answers his question by saying "Love is a secret society."
- Disturbed Doves: Pigeons fly up when a young woman jumps from the roof of a tall building to her death.
- Driven to Suicide: A young woman in a schoolgirl's uniform stands on the top of a building. Love doesn't save her; she jumps. (The film never says why, although presumably it has to do with love.)
- Flipping the Bird: The vignette with the two people flipping through the dating app starts with the man skipping past a picture of a woman flipping the bird to the camera.
- Foot Popping: One scene shows a man and a woman kissing in an elevator, her high heeled shoe popping up as the elevator door closes.
- Framing Device: A man in a cafe, idly drinking coffee and wondering "what is love?"
- Gray Rain of Depression: One vignette shows a man rushing up to an apartment building in the rain, bouquet of roses in hand, and pressing someone's buzzer. After no one answers he's left standing in the pouring rain, with the mood of depression heightened by petals falling off the roses and landing in rain puddles.
- Male Frontal Nudity: Seen from the male half of the couple on the beach, when, instead of being on the beach, they are both inside and both naked as they're having an argument.
- Non-Indicative Name: There is no windshield or windshield wiper. In an interview Albert Mielgo said it was a metaphor for a windshield wiper in the rain, how the film cuts back and forth from vignette to vignette like how rain on a windshield makes a new pattern every time only to be erased when it's wiped.
- Painted CGI: The animation has flat textures on the models with superimposed lines.
- Pop-Up Texting: One of the vignettes is told solely through pop-up texting. One person texts the other (as the film shows the communications satellite that's relaying the texts) and says "Yesterday was fun, right?". The other person agrees. After a couple of more texts the first person says that they felt a connection and they really want to see the other person again, and again, and again. This vignette ends with the other person's text window going "...".
- Rule of Three: A man and a woman pass each other walking; he turns around to look at her, then walks on. A second time it happens and the second man also walks on. A third man and woman pass, the man turns to look at the woman, then he changes direction and dashes after her.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: One of the vignettes, and one of the most repeated ones, starts with a man and a woman on a California beach. While the man is fully clothed, the woman wears nothing but bikini bottoms.
- Social Media Is Bad: The man and the woman shopping for groceries. They are perfect for each other, and they are standing literally right next to each other. They never notice each other because each is busy flipping through photos on a dating app.
- Window Love: There isn't a windshield wiper, but there is a window washer. A man on a scaffold on the outside of a skyscraper touches the window. Then he leans forward and kisses it. Cut to the other side of the window, where a man in a business suit is also kissing the glass.
