This is a mostly CGI animated film about a homeless young girl. She runs away from home and is forced to sleep rough and beg on the streets. She is assaulted by a young man that thinks he can take advantage of her unfortunate situation, but she resists, hits back and runs away. Angry, he gives chase. She hides cornered in a back of shops goods yard in the early hours. No one is around to help her, which is the story of her life at this moment. He enters the goods yard and walks towards where she is.
At this point the plot can go in a number of way; there is a deliberate level of ambiguity and alternative explanations for what happens next, you decide. All I can say is you read the story in the following ways:
a) go with it and believe it’s all real/ scifi fantasy. There are spirits that guide and protect you if open to it.
b) maybe the girl is having a dissociation experience to deal with the trauma she is feeling, going to a safe place to mentally hide, where she is in control. It's how many people cope with truma or abuse. At the bottom of this blog I have posted a link that explains it and video of people talking about such experiences.
or
c) There’s a lot happening in the video that is metaphor. The man attacking her represents her take, as a homeless teenager with nowhere to turn, on society in general, a society she wants to escape from but keeps coming back to hit her. As she gets confident, works out what matters, she is able to kill that burden of her view of the world, to learn to finally stand up for herself.
So the plot, with stills from the video to guide you through it
(these stills are at 700px to keep size down - the video is in 4k = 2160px)
1) It starts with her having too beg in the street and deal with the scornful looks and being ignored
2) A man, seeing her begging, tries to take advantage of her, a lone attractive girl at night. She resists him and knees him where it hurts most, and runs away. But he’s angry and gives chase.
3) She tries to lose him and runs down a dark dead end. She needs somewhere to hide
4) She hears him shout. She is cornered and quickly hides the best she can. Her pulse races as she hears him still shouting and getting so near. She closes her eyes wanting to be somewhere else, to escape the only way she knows how in such a traumatic situation
5) Then out of nowhere a large moth appears at goes for the man. This is where the plot options diverge! In the dark he is surprised and shocked. Not knowing what on earth it is he panics and runs away
6) She opens her eyes. He’s gone and all that remains is a beautiful moth dancing in the back door light. Notice the framing of the sign top right, the red lettering ‘You will be fined’ is now only seen/framed as ‘you will be fine’. Notice the heart made out of ‘love’ words.
7) Then the moth disappears …right through the door! Is she seeing things? Curious she has to check the door for any gaps it could have got through. Checking the door she puts her hand on it and it goes right through. She is very curious and finds her whole arms can go through. How does this door work ….maybe love is the key?
8) but then a force drags her through. Her fear suddenly turns to excitement, she’s in a whole new place, some sort of old walled garden. Note behind her is a strong gate with a large padlock, a locked barrier that doesn’t allow anyone else into her secret world?
9) She has to explore, tentatively at first. The moth reappears, making her jump but it appears to be leading her on. Then, at the end of the leafy tunnel she steps out and is initially blinded by the light. Adjusting she finds her self in a beautiful walled garden. A place of calm with thick strong walls to keep the rest of the world out.
10) She follows the moth down the path. She is starting to relax in this special place; her place, away from the horrible frightening world outside. She then discovers a pond. The moth dives into it and disappears. She looks into it fearing for the moth’s safety. As she stares into it she sees figures. First her as a child and then her parents arguing over her. Arguing, always arguing.
11) She sees herself having enough of it and grown up she runs away. She sees herself running, always running away. You see her sleeping on park benches, begging for handouts to survive and her being attacked, alone and vulnerable. It’s that same man, is that an historic view or what is happening at that moment and this is all a mental dissociation experience she has developed to deal with it the abuse and trauma?
12) But then comes someone else, some new she hasn’t seen before. She seems to make it all go away and make a feeling of calm and happiness. She disappears but reappears again as the girls reflection in the pond. Wait, it’s her!? She looks up and checks. She has become this woman in the beautiful flowing dress, this confident, calm, in control beautiful woman!
13) She looks around, The air is full of hundred of butterflies. Maybe she is not the only moth or butterfly in the world, there are hundreds like her. They dance around her and lead her further down the path and to a bridge. She is now unbelievably happy. She sees and take pleasure in all the basic simply beauty of nature. All she wants in life is a place like this. Some people are lucky enough to be born into it, gifted it yet don’t appreciate it. Adversity can make you appreciate so much others never see.
14) The butterflies lead her over a bridge through the trees. There she sees them dance around an ancient rock which is lit up with a bring light in its centre. She has to explore. She finds the light and bathes in its warm and wonder.
15) Finding the light she in now transported to another place. ‘Empyrean’- an historical mythical term 'the highest heaven or heavenly sphere in ancient and medieval cosmology usually, consisting of fire or light' or also in more modern general thinking as 'an ideal place or state'. She flies to her heavily place, she goes to her Empyrean, away from this world
16) In her Empyrean she makes her ‘heavenly sphere’ or ‘light’. It’s her barrier to protect her from the outside. She is for the first time truly at peace, but not for long. She can not remain hidden here from the real world for long. Her parents are still there in her mind, do they want her to came back or not?
17) She can hold her parents on the outside of the sphere but not the next invasion. It’s the man that was chasing her. He’s there right by her, has he always been there and she has blocked him out until now. She can not longer block him out and her sphere of light, her Empyrean disappears. Her form sadly returns to the real world, to the hoodie homeless girl
18) Now it’s as if she wakes up back to the real world. The man wasn’t chased off, he’d found her. He tries kissing her and then gets angry and in his rage he starts violently hitting her. Her skin gets bruised, her eye swollen and blackened, her lip cut. This is the real world she was hiding from than bullies and abuses her, that doesn’t help or protect her. She is on her own.
19) Then the woman in the dress suddenly appears, holding a large knife and stabs to man in the back. He falls to the ground. Then they both disappear, and the girl feels the pain of the attack. It’s morning, she gets up to walk away, to another day on the streets begging for survival. It was a rough night, not the first but one of the worst; she’s getting used to it.
20) As she walks away she gives a nod, as if thanks, to the graffiti of a woman’s face. The face looks back and smiles and releases the moths to follow her. Lying right below the face is the lifeless body of the man with a knife in its back!?
