Worth: $16.50
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Cast:
Romain Duris, Paul Kircher, Adele Exarchopoulos, Tom Mercier, Billie Blain
Intro:
... a strong, confident attack on small-minded bigotry, packaged in Dr. Moreau wrapping paper.
Now and then, it can be tricky to unearth the theme or underlying meaning of certain films, which often leads to a straight-up documentation of the movie or unfocussed word salad. Sometimes, it’s just pointless to search. Then there are films like Thomas Cailley’s The Animal Kingdom, where there are clearly perceptible nuggets in the loam.
So as not to be confused with David Michod’s seminal Animal Kingdom, maybe we need to go with the French title, Le Règne Animal. Whatever the language, this is a wonderful little film. The topics touched on here include otherisation, palliative care, and kicking against the system. There’s so much going on here, but it’s mostly about the pain of letting someone go. That’s not to say that all the people mutating into animals is insignificant – this acts as an oddly intriguing framework for the themes explored.
The faces in the film include the always watchable Romain Duris and Adèle Exarchopoulos but the beating, evolving heart is Paul Kircher’s Émile. Kircher is from French acting stock – his parents are Jerome Kircher and Irene Jacob – and his performance here is jerkily transfixing. On hearing the news that his infected mother is to be transferred from a Paris hospital to the south of France, Émile and dad, François (Duris) make a short term move to be near her. An accident occurs during transport, letting several ‘critters’ loose in this thickly forested region. Some are recaptured but some….
The idea was apparently conceived pre-Covid, but it has a bit of the quarantine feel of that time. It’s ridiculous, obviously, but done with no hint of irony, even when Condorman swoops in. The CGI is unavoidably ropey, likely the budget didn’t stretch that far, and Exarchopoulos doesn’t have a hell of a lot to do (she’s never far away from the action, though).
Yet, these are minor quibbles. The Cronenbergian body horror is suitably squirm-inducing, there’s a great corn-field sequence, and the climax brings Truffaut’s The 400 Blows to mind. And a couple of bits about François and his wife were proper emotional, not to mention the final action of the story. There’s a quote in the film, attributed to the French poet, Rene Char:
That which comes into the world not to upset anything deserves neither respect nor patience.
The moment François eventually remembers this, is a powerful juncture in the film. The Animal Kingdom is a strong, confident attack on small-minded bigotry, packaged in Dr. Moreau wrapping paper.