I feel like rewatches are necessary even for basic understanding; it's the Ulysses of American Indie Short Animated features[1].

That said, it is unapologetically female, even when it isn't particularly feminine; if it isn't meeting (male) cinema on male cinemagoer terms, then that is their problem.

The repeated incorporation of sexual gestures as motifs, and recurrences of masks as being the only representation some women have, suggests some places to begin the decoding process, but I confess the vegetal themes are a bit beyond my comprehension at the moment.

The animation is incredible. It feels new and fresh 44 years later, and the fact that it took this long for similar techniques to feel amazing in a blockbuster context shows how far ahead of its time this was.
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[1] Permission granted to use that as a blurb, though I suspect that will turn off more people than it turns on, as it were.