Who's the real animal? Oh, wait, it's us
(Le Règne animal)
dir: Thomas Cailley
2023
This is an okay film, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that I thought it would be about more than it appears to be, and I think I was wrong on that count.
I started off thinking that the people in the story undergoing changes, as in, the premise of this film is that set contemporarily, some kind of virus or something similar randomly causes people to start changing into animals, that they must symbolise something.
This being set in France, and being filled with French people, I at first assumed the animal-human hybrids probably symbolised immigrants or refugees. And they probably do, at first.
And then as the film chugged its way along, I thought “well, these people are transitioning, from one state to another, from one form to another, transforming, and a lot of people hate them, so maybe this is a literalisation of the pro-trans / anti-trans debate. At least twice conflict / assaults happen in or near bathrooms. But that’s when I thought “nah, I’m reading too much into this.”
This is a flick where some people, no matter how much you love them, grow and change into something unexpected, and, in some cases, dangerous. You can delay it for a while, hide it for a while, but ultimately cannot stop it.
And that’s it, really, no matter how much I read into things just because there are French people involved.
Francois (Romain Duris) is the dad, and he’s convinced that everything will be okay if he just doesn’t let go. His wife Lana has started to transform into something, and since his teenaged son Emile (Paul Kircher) has recent scars on his face, we’re guessing keeping her tethered to her humanity is not really working out that well. In a visit to the facility where she is being ‘treated’ there is no sign of recognition, no hint that she sees her family at all.
Society hasn’t fallen apart yet, there are still police and army personnel rounding up the freaks and putting them in facilities, but a lot of people are hanging on by their fingernails. Francois moves himself and his son to an area near a facility, convinced that his wife will come back to them, even though there’s nothing to indicate that there’s any possibility of that. There’s even a break out from the facility during a transfer, which means the forests around abound with what the subtitles indicate are called “creeps” or “creepers”, but, like always, even delivered insultingly, the French word for them sounds way cooler. Bestioles, they call them.
Where most of this flick transpires is one of those places that seems like it’s on the border between modern France and medieval France, and I don’t mean just because of the architecture. Most of the flick transpires in and around a rustic restaurant, downmarket cabins and the forests and lakes themselves of the Nouvelle Aquitaine region, and the locals aren’t all torches and pitchforks most of the time, but they’re not exactly welcoming, either. That’s where it really feels like it’s about the so-called ‘refugee crisis’, since a lot of politics depends on dehumanising these people just trying to survive and get somewhere where they can make a living and not be killed for being some variation of muslim / light-skinned / dark-skinned / gay / trans / an activist / a woman.
So these chimeras that can get by, like Francois’ son, because they’re at an early stage of their transformation, fight the good fight trying to hide their affliction (to avoid being burned at the stake), and to protect or help other hybrids further along in their transformation.
Adèle Exarchopoulos is in this flick as a cop, and I think she looks a bit confused as to why she’s in the flick. She doesn’t really do much of anything. I wondered if she was there so that Francois could realise “well, merde, my wife is gone, and even if she wasn’t she doesn’t even recognise me any more, and look, here’s Adèle Exarchopoulos to have sex with”, but they didn’t even go that way, which is so unlike any French film, or any film with Adèle Exarchopoulos in it.
I even wondered if she was there to protect / help Emile’s character transform / transition, but that job is given to someone else called Nina (Billie Blain). Emile tries to balance starting a new school, the loss of a parent, the unwanted (at first) and shameful, and dangerous changes he’s undergoing, which is too clumsy a metaphor for puberty and sexuality, even for a flick of such obviousness.
He also seems to find himself happier in the company of other beings who are further along in their transitions. He befriends a bird man who calls himself Fix (Tom Mercier), because he’s forgotten his human name, and a little girl who’s become something of a reptile or an amphibian, who they call Grenouille, which made me laugh, because it’s one of like five French words I know, and that’s only because of the main character of Patrick Suskind’s Perfume, who had the same name, meaning frog.
I don’t think, or at least I didn’t feel like this had body horror or outright horror / thriller moments, because even though there are scenes where some of these creatures seem to be threatening, mostly the flick wants them not to be seen as vicious mindless creatures. Though they have lost their humanity, and don’t regard humans almost at all, they regard each other, they help each other, so they retain some sort of kinship, despite their radically different appearances.
Emile knows what the end point will have to be, in that he will have to leave his father, who still hasn’t accepted the loss of his wife, and thus is poorly placed to cope with losing his son as well. But that’s life, eh, whether it’s in the contemporary world, or one shaped by fantastical forces. Delaying the inevitable helps no one and nothing, and if anyone gets to make any decisions in this flick, the decision sits on Francois’ shoulders as to whether he’s going to set his son free to live and thrive, or be hunted down for his precious bodily fluids.
For all the allegorical possible aspects of something so obvious, and so explicable, it’s not really that complex an arrangement or resolution. Francois has seemingly sacrificed everything to keep his family together, but no one asked him to, and it’s saved nothing, in the end. Of course now he’s free to go bang that cop, but there’s an unspoken aspect to this flick which isn’t literalised – this flick is not a post-apocalyptic flick, but it’s pretty obvious that in this scenario, humanity is doomed, and that’s not a bad thing. The world will eventually be populated with beings that don’t share common language, technology or memory, but the world will keep chugging along without us fucking everything up.
And Romain Duris will be sitting in a corner, smoking cigarettes, waiting for his wife and son to maybe come back and visit, if they ever find the time.
On a technical level, well, the physical effects work with make up and prosthetics is pretty strong, but some of the digital effects, like with Fix trying to learn to fly, or actually flying, well, no one goes to French films expecting Hollywood, or even Bollywood level effects. I think it’s well acted throughout, mostly. The most striking scenes bizarrely occur after some kind of festival, which involves people dressing up in armour and doing swordfights and stuff, but there’s also, to emphasise the medieval response to the growing crisis, a bunch of guys in costume with stilts and guns, chasing after the scurrying bestioles through a corn field, which has to be seen to be believed.
It’s not the greatest thing I’ve seen lately, but it’s far from the worst.
7 times I hope I turn into more of a sloth out of 10
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“Trust me, there’s nothing to be scared of.” – no words inspire greater fear than those - The Animal Kingdom
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