Animal Kingdom: A thrilling fantasy film that puts daron in their place

Let’s say it right away: we can’t imagine The Animal Kingdom before seeing it. Unpredictable, the film escapes any label. It slides from one genre, from one emotion, from one theme to another until it sucks us in a more than welcome whirlwind of strangeness.

Funny but deadpan, tragic but emancipatory, fantastic but realistic, intimate but political, The Animal Kingdom it is an explosive film that tells its story in its own way the failure of paternalism In family and the Nature.

The animal kingdom, what is it?

In the world of The animal kingdomhumans transform into strange beings, halfway between Man and animal… Until their inexorable complete transformation.

Francesco’s wife (Romain Duris) is struck by this mysterious phenomenon and disappears. He will do everything to find and save her, helped by his sixteen-year-old son Émile (Paolo Kircher), while the region is populated by creatures of a new type…

A mutant film

Paradoxically, The Animal Kingdom East as realistic as it is fantastic. This strange aesthetic and narrative bias could be summed up in the first scene of the film. In a car stuck in traffic, we witness a very banal discussion between a father who criticizes his son for eating chips full of additives (while he himself frantically puffs on his cigarette.) Their arguments are suddenly interrupted by the crash of a bird man screaming, struggling to escape the paramedics, breaking everything in his path.

Forget those films in which the creatures are shot from afar, from behind or in the shadows: a clever meeting between digital art and handmade crafts, the special effects of The animal kingdom I am impressive, magnificent and proud of it. Thomas Cailley lets the viewer have fun, especially for a long time hypnotic and moving close-ups on the often tortured faces of these mutant creatures.

The Animal Kingdom is it a post-apocalyptic film? Yes but no. The world imagined by Thomas Cailley is not in the grip of general panic. He does not feature men who start running or shooting in all directions after discovering that the Earth is invaded by similar monsters success American.

The director makes the effort imagine the world after ; the one where we learn to live with a strange phenomenonbut to which we have a little he eventually got used to it.

The world after: after the virus, after Humanity, after patriarchy

If at first glance it may appear as a renunciation of the spectacular dimension of the fantastic film, this choice is exciting. He does The animal kingdom a film that makes no concessions between the entertainment richness of a genre film AND the emotional impact of a drama. Actually, The Animal Kingdom East hybrid like the Men-Animals he portrays.

We used the expression above on purpose world afterwidely used for speaking after covid. The afterlife is also one where we can no longer pretend to be surprised when institutions, social norms and power relations lose absolutely all their meaning once swept away Of a virus (covid), a climate catastrophe (ours) or an epidemic of animalization (in Cailley’s film). “Another childbirth and I commit suicide” one of Émile’s classmates will even talk about the measures in place against the mutation epidemic.

Look at the monster

As such, it is not insignificant that Thomas Cailley chose to center his story on this topicA father and his son. Her mother, transformed into an animal for months and then reported missing, is excluded from the story from the beginning of the film. Actually, The Animal Kingdom East much more precise than a reflection on the relationships between the human AND the animal : it compares above all the limits of masculinity in the face of Nature.

François is obsessed with the idea of ​​finding his wife. That’s why he doubles of authority with his son, who sees his life turned upside down by his father’s choices (he moves to the South and attends a new high school). Most of their discussions boil down to François’s request to remain available to continue research in the region.

But isn’t it a waste of effort? What if, even if they had found her, she had been his wife? Already part ? “ I don’t know if I’m more afraid of not finding it or find it”, François confides in one of the rare moments of the film in which he is not busy. The search for this character who never stops talking quoting the poet René Char, always repeating the same two sentencesgive orders AND run towards nowhere that’s how it is frenetic and obsessivewhich we immediately understand hides something profound loss of meaning.

Because, really, the era of creatures profoundly challenges the patriarchal order of the world. François is very little in comparison a wife, a son, a changing world towards an animal state, which escapes precisely the norms of socialization, that is, also of domination.

The film, in its own form, oust almost the character of Romain Duris, who we realize is less and less present on the screen as the scenes progress. What really interests the director is his son. At the beginning of the film, Émile looks like a shy teenager, with his hair falling into his eyes. At this moment we are far from imagining the place he will occupy in the film (especially since the young Paul Kircher signs one of his first roles in cinema, alongside monument that is Romain Duris).

However, it is Émile who crystallizes the most fascinating questions and, above all, I saw them. How was this baby born? mutant (as an adult man, but not only) He will do it growalthough who is forced by a strange phenomenon that takes possession of his body and mind ? And if, this statewhich at first seemed monstrous, was actually profoundly so emancipatory ?

AS he pours himself uncompromisingly into the fantastic, films and looks his creatures straight in the eyes, The Animal Kingdom posed Best regards the ecological question and all its social, political and emotional implications in the best possible way: with imagination, questions and humility.

And what’s more, it did the most beautiful ending that we have been seeing at the cinema for some time.