The animal kingdom | Survival instinct

Starring Paul Kircher and Romain Duris, The animal kingdomThomas Cailley’s second feature film, tells a moving love story between a teenager and his father against the backdrop of a mysterious pandemic which transforms human beings into animal creatures.

Ten years after The fightersCésar for best first film, director Thomas Cailley confirms with The animal kingdom, written with Paule Munier (whose original script Cailley had discovered during a competition at FEMIS, the National School of Image and Sound), which he knows how to handle different genres at the same time with ease . Thus, after skillfully juggling the codes of romantic comedy, western and science fiction for his first feature film, here he is again with a second feature film where family drama, anticipatory drama, fable, the fantastic and the marvelous.

Evoking in turn the recent pandemic, the migration crisis, climate upheavals and the extinction of species (and much more as the story lends itself to a multitude of interpretations), The animal kingdom focuses on the destiny of Émile (sensitive Paul Kircher, revealed in The high school studentby Christophe Honoré), 16 years old, who, with his father, François (moving Romain Duris), leaves Paris for the south of France in the hope of being closer to his mother, Lana (Florence Deretz).

Struck by a mysterious illness that transforms human beings into animals, Lana, who has become too dangerous to live in society, escaped from the convoy transporting her to a hospital center specializing in the treatment of mutants. Like the other victims, as a kind police officer calls them (Adèle Exarchopoulos, underused, even useless), Lana found refuge in the forest with the creatures hunted by part of the population. As he adapts as best he can to his new life, Émile notices changes in himself, which soon make him the laughing stock of his new classmates. To add to his woes, his relationship with his father is increasingly strained.

Equal to himself, Thomas Cailley describes with finesse the torments of youth in this metaphor of adolescence. During the high school scenes, he accurately captures the contradictions of young people divided between the desire to live together and the rejection of difference.

During the scenes in the forest, where Émile comes across fabulous creatures, the bird-man Fix (Tom Mercier) and the little chameleon girl Grenouille (Maëlle Benkimoun), the young boy’s crying desire to belong is expressed in a heartbreaking way.

Furthermore, the filmmaker, strongly assisted in photography by his brother, David Cailley, demonstrates once again the skill with which he knows how to take advantage of landscapes. Having identified places that have escaped the hands of man in the forests of Gascony, he displays places that strike the imagination with their wild and enchanting beauty. While maintaining suspense, it leads the viewer to discover astonishing mutants, closer to a fairy tale than a horror drama. In this regard, the makeup, prosthetics and special effects prove quite convincing.

Despite the care given to the diversity of united creatures, it is first and foremost the great human family that the filmmaker is interested in, who strives to represent it in all its aspects, the most glorious as well as the less glamorous. At the heart of this ode to humanity, what transcends the many themes addressed by Cailley and Munier, such as transmission, mourning, resilience and self-affirmation, is the love story between a father and his son. If certain passages turn out to be tear-jerking, we must recognize that in this sometimes fused, sometimes conflicting relationship, Thomas Cailley skilfully exploits the animal part that lies dormant in every human being.

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Fantasy drama

The animal kingdom

Thomas Cailley

Paul Kircher, Romain Duris, Adèle Exarchopoulos

2:10 a.m.

7.5/10