‘As bestas’: a cat in the loft

The famous author Goethe, considered the most important German-language writer, wrote in his novel “The pains of young Werther”: “Must what constitutes man’s happiness also be the source of his misery?”. Three years after directing ‘Mother’, Madrid’s Rodrigo Sorogoyen once again makes a third-place change in his filmography, combining his ability to create magnificent suspense stories with the addition of a more pleasant and dramatic aspect. The director makes ‘As bestas’which arrives in Spanish commercial theaters with its task, after having obtained the acclaim of the public and critics for its screening at the Cannes Film Festival, after having won the Audience Award for the best European film at the San Sebastian Festival and, above all, after having surpassed 320,000 spectators in France, a country where it made its debut much earlier and which makes its landing home with an aura of virtuous success.

From the title itself to the film’s prologue, it refers to thea rapa das bestas, a cultural festival which consists in cutting the mane of horses and which metaphorically portrays the tribal and primitive spirit that is hidden in the character of the protagonists. After that sequence of extreme violence, in a fight between the human and the animal, Sorogoyen moves on to a conversation between patrons in a bar in a town in the deepest Galicia in which he shows his masterful management of tension, transforming what It could have been a bucolic and costume moment in the prelude to terror, in a moment worthy of an Old West westernthe gang of inhabitants that has always ranted against the stranger, considered a strange and hostile entity, who is harassed as soon as he enters and exits.

Inspired by a real case, Sorogoyen, who is once again in tandem with Isabel Peña in writing the screenplay (proving to be a virtuoso duo after co-writing all the Madrid’s feature films as a solo director), creates a wild thriller, which breaks with any idyllic vision of the rural environment, which exudes a fascinating natural and at the same time inhospitable beauty. At its deepest and most frontal, ‘As bestas’ is a portrait of the most brutal side of the human beingwhich represents the basic instincts of his male characters, in an atmosphere of violence that increases and ends up exploding like a water dam that sees how its small cracks become a big hole.

On that journey to the inevitable destination, Sorogoyen configures a barbaric representation of the male, in which he fights for the territory, coming to mark it. Here is a fight of titans, between Denis Ménochet and Luis Zahera. The first, who already has experience in the field of rural intrigues with the fascinating ‘Only the beasts’, shows once again his ability to convey a lot alone with his cold eyes and hard features – as he did well in’ Custody shared ‘-. On this occasion, his portly body represents the opposite of the animal, embodying a French professor who decided to settle with his wife in the region, with the intention of setting up an eco-sustainable garden and converting the houses in the area into possible residences for citizens who try to get away from the maddened crowd. Conversely, you have Zahera, who is skilled in hostile characters – see ‘La playa de los ahogados’ or the ‘Entrevías’ series -, which represents the opposite, that of the a man destined to live on the family farm, who had no other destiny to choose from and whose relationship with the land is much more ambivalent.

Sorogoyen signs the best Spanish film of the year

Their confrontation is cold and tremendously tense, thanks to Sorogoyen’s exceptional ability to create that kind of stale air, shrouded in suspicion, fear, uncertainty and veiled hatred, which is also captured from a cinematic point of view. ‘As bestas’ is distinguished by the absence of contorted camera movements, with a much greater presence of slow shots, many of which are fixed, which manage to create that feeling of constant threat and visceral hatred at the slightest movement, as if the beast i couldn’t see if it is still. That confrontation that sets aside the most primary face of the human male is surprisingly contrasted in the middle of the footageMénochet passing the baton as protagonist to Marina Foïs -also with a large filmography of female characters with character-.

It is that second part that elevates the already round feature film much more, in contrast to the primary from a female perspective. and how the irruption of women in the confrontation breaks the pattern of the spiral of violence, becoming much more cryptic and slow. Far from creating an archetypal profile, Sorogoyen and Peña manage to maintain that atmosphere of veiled hatred, only transformed into a hypnotic antagonistic story that manages to go beyond that fury. and reflect the spirit of resistance of its female protagonist and how the break-in of women into the conflict causes an unexpected outcome.

There is no doubt that, speaking only of 2022, ‘As bestas’ is the best cinematographic proposal of the Spanish manufacture. A jewel that carries that suspenseful spirit with the classic Sorogoyen aroma, that he showed so well in ‘God forgive us’ and ‘The kingdom’, combined with that more dramatic and slow gaze that he already felt in ‘Mother’. A multi-layered country thriller that it strips the most elementary instincts of the human psyche.

Note: 9

The best: The atmosphere of tension and violence and how it transmutes like water.

Worse: Its second part causes some confusion that will not appeal to those followers of the more conventional thriller.