‘Per tutta la vita” or “Till the end of life”.... These phrases probably sound familiar to most of us. Almost everyone has done an endless love promise and sadly most have witnessed how this promise slowly fades away until it turns into a beautiful lie and hides somewhere in our memories.  Roberto Catani’s  2018 animation titled “Per Tutta La Vita” is exactly about this promise, but it  ironically opens right from the scene where this “endless love” reaches its end. Still, Catani parts from this point and starts to reconstruct the relationship, leading us through the different phases of this romance  which seem to be random and unconnected, but are brought together with very smooth transitions. It makes an impression as if we’re really wandering in someone’s mind and slowly opening all the memories. In the end, the animation reaches the beginning,  by making it a full circle. It leaves the viewer with a feeling that love can stay timeless in our memories, as the animation itself seems to be an endless circle, an infinite loop which constantly revisits the memories of past.  Although many might feel that the end of a love story is devastating, this film is not focused on depicting the dramatic aspects of relationships, but the light and cheerful ones. It is more of an artistic approach to our short-term romances and the importance of keeping those stories in our memories. As Catani himself mentions in the interview for ARTE, it is crucial  to remember and keep the beautiful memories of our past relationships, because we usually tend to forget them and remember only the breakup which leads to awful consequences. In this film, Catani tries to convey the magic of those memories in a very fun and game-like way, without really digging deeper into the gravity of these emotions. It goes back to the past memories of a couple and gives us a rather ironic and bizarre image of their relationship, mixed with dreams and hopes which make this trip a breathtaking one. But Catani not only invites us to the characters’ past memories, but also the “memories” of animation history, which is the old technique of hand drawing. The animation is entirely drawn frame by frame and that is why it  has a very warm and nostalgic feeling to it, which perfectly suits the topic of animation. It is hard to imagine a 2D or 3D animation going into the memories of the characters and at the same time staying very humane and real. The new techniques would probably push back the audience with their artificiality and coldness, whereas the drawings keep the animation fun and really speak to the viewer.  With the simple technique of drawing, Catani manages to convince multiple symbols and metaphors throughout the animation. Probably the most memorable one is the circus which constantly comes up throughout the film. Catani himself mentioned that love relationship for him has a lot of caracteristiques common with the circus: the melancholic irony of the clown, the magic, the game of the juggler, but also the constant anticipation of surprise. And this anticipation of surprise is perfectly transmitted to the audience by Catani’s animation, as every frame gives a new angle to the familiar objects and constantly discovers new images in the old ones.  This is how the animation gives an opportunity to the viewer to lose himself in the characters’ memories, and enjoy the promise of endless love… even if on the screen it only lasts six minutes.    Mari Sahakyan