Strings is a 1991 animated short film (10 1/2 minutes) directed by Wendy Tilby, and produced by the National Film Board of Canada.
An older man and an older woman reside in the same apartment building. In fact, she lives directly above him, she on the third floor and he on the second. Both have unusual hobbies; she is constructing a model of the RMS Titanic while he plays in a string quartet.
One afternoon, the woman draws a bath in her third-floor apartment while the man invites his string quartet partners in on the floor below. As it happens, there's a leak in the woman's apartment, which drips down directly onto the man's dinner table. Unfortunate consequences ensue.
Tropes:
- Bathtub Scene: The woman takes a bath, which triggers the story that follows.
- Chekhov's Gun: The cracks around the fixture holding the man's ceiling light.
- December–December Romance: Hinted at when the man, who has become aware of the drip, comes up to the woman's apartment with a toolbox in hand. Ultimately averted, it seems, when the chandelier below tears loose and falls in the man's apartment, just as the man is becoming aware that the problem under the bathtub is too big for him to fix.
- Double-Meaning Title: The string in the man's toolbox, the strings of the man's string quartet, and, seemingly, a metaphorical meaning about the ways in which people are linked together.
- Dream Sequence: Either that or an Imagine Spot as it's difficult to tell if the woman falls asleep. But when the woman settles in the bathtub with her Titanic toy boat, she appears to have a dream of the Titanic in all its glory, with the first class passengers ballroom dancing.
- Falling Chandelier of Doom: Played for a gag, as it's not a chandelier in a grand ballroom or an opera house, but the man's ceiling light, which falls directly onto his dinner table as the rest of the string quartet performs.
- Match Cut: From a drop of water trickling through the crack in the woman's floor, to someone pouring a glass of wine in the man's apartment.
- Nameless Narrative: Almost an Enforced Trope in a cartoon without dialogue.
- Silence Is Golden: No dialogue in the cartoon.
- Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: Silence as the man and woman ride up on the elevator together; they don't seem to be on speaking terms despite being neighbors.
- Visual Title Drop: A roll of string can be seen amongst the things in the man's toolbox.
