Animator Bill Plympton trades the surreal for the fantastical and the satirical for the sincere with this story of, yes, true love tested and triumphant. (What he doesn't leave behind is frank physicality; it's a rare film about sweetness and romance that features so much pneumatic action.) Jake and Ella meet, are parted, and must find a way to reunite — the end. The story is stuffed with exaggeration, elongation, elaboration, but it's all in the service of making a commonplace circumstance — love — look like it feels when it happens to you, i.e. the very opposite of commonplace. Exalted, extraordinary, ecstatic. And it's all done without words (but with plenty of sighs, grunts, growls, howls, and snatches of opera, bandoneon, and classical music). The cars go off the rails toward the end, and it's just possible you'll grow impatient with Plympton's pacing. But it's a short trip, guided by a hand that understands both the point and possibilities of cartooning. (2015) — Matthew Lickona