“In genre cinema, we work from stereotypes, and here, I wanted to exacerbate them,” says Annick Blanc straight away, in an interview for the release of Hunting dayhis first feature film, selected for South by Southwest, which opens this week.
It’s a case of saying it: it brings together characters who are complete opposites and who embody all sorts of “identity” clichés. Their patience is put to the test, while they find themselves in spite of themselves in a hunting trip that turns into a nightmare, in the middle of the forest.
Everything changes when Nina (Nahéma Ricci), a sex worker, is dumped by her pimp on the road in the countryside. She then joins five hunters in their isolated cabin, at the invitation of one of them, while she gets out of trouble and can return to Montreal. The men, who reluctantly agree to take her in, are unbearably macho. Cohabitation promises to be difficult.
While in the first third of the story we expect the plot to be based on this tension – on the presence of a vulnerable woman in an eminently masculine and potentially toxic environment – a new character gives the film a highly dramatic and even dreamlike turn.
Frédéric Millaire’s character Zouvi, Nina’s friend who had invited her to the chalet, “picks up” a “migrant” who was wandering on the road during a car ride under the influence of drugs. He is black, his name is Doudos and he does not speak French. But he stays with the hunters because he does not understand what is happening, he is alone in the forest and because the boys panic and feel obliged to take him in, especially under pressure from Nina.
“Breaking stereotypes”
In the chaos, drunkenness and pernicious ripple effect caused by five brutes in a hunting cabin, Doudos’ safety is compromised. He then appears to cast spells on them in his own language. and is the subject of curious impressionistic scenes. It is at times extremely uncomfortable, especially since the twists and turns follow one another at a frantic pace.
“I wanted to play with the viewer’s expectations and represent archetypes so that they confront each other,” explains Annick Blanc, who also wrote the script and co-produced the film. “The boys are macho and immature, the only woman is a sex worker and the only foreigner is undocumented. I went looking for these clichés, to represent them with humanity and break the stereotypes.”
The audience will judge how well the challenge was met. In any case, the young filmmaker says she wanted to stage a humanist metaphor: “What shocks me the most is our collective reactions to the disasters we face. There are so many humanitarian, ecological and political crises, but we always rely on the government to change things. By bringing this stranger among the men who mistreat him, I wanted to show the consequences of the group effect and, by extension, of our collective negligence.”
Initially, she wanted to write a screenplay about “toxic masculinity and the gaslighting [détournement cognitif] “But, “this subject was too close to me, I didn’t feel ready to tackle it head-on,” confides the filmmaker. She thus “asked herself what [elle avait] need to talk to [ses] compatriots today” and nevertheless drew inspiration from a toxic relationship she experienced to write her male characters, whom she sees “as the same five-headed monster.”
Horror in the feminine
Annick Blanc also drew on “a tradition of representing hunting as a masculine environment where everything is permitted.” “I was struck by The Luminous Beast (Pierre Perrault, 1986), she says, who made me understand what hunting could reveal.
In Quebec, “hunting films” that claim to be influenced by Perrault have been abundant in recent years. One need only think of Like fire by Philippe Lesage, which will be released this fall, or Arsenault and sons (Rafaël Ouellet, 2022). All of them deal with the subject in light of contemporary issues. And Annick Blanc tackles it “to ruin the men’s party.” “That’s part of the message,” she says.
Her relationship with genre cinema in general, which she has been exploring since her previous short films, is also marked by her desire for subversion: “In horror, women often take on the roles of victims. I wanted to surprise with a strong female character, who assumes her sexuality.”
This is also why, for Nahéma Ricci, who we had not seen in a Quebec feature film since Antigone (Sophie Deraspe, 2019), this role represents a “coming of age”. “I was previously very much confined to roles of teenagers who were less comfortable in their bodies,” says the actress. “I come out of this experience changed, in which I was so well supported.”