The Animal Kingdom (The Animal Kingdom)France – 2023. Directed by Thomas Cailley. With Paul Kircher, Romain Duris, Adèle Exarchopoulos. The film received 12 nominations for the 2024 César Awards, winning 5. It was presented in the “Un certain regard” section at Cannes 2023. It received the 2024 Lumière Award for best director.
The review of Stefano Visani, president of L’Age d’Or
“What’s it like to be a bat?”. The American philosopher Thomas Nagel asked himself in a famous article, in which he intended to demonstrate that we cannot seriously know the mental phenomena that occur in other minds. What effect would it have to transform oneself into an animal, any animal?
This could be the question the writers of “The Animal Kingdom” asked themselves. (released June 13th with wide theatrical presence) which tells of an alternative present in which, for some unknown reason since the film begins in medias res, many humans begin a progressive transition towards the animal kingdom, gradually transforming into bizarre human/animal hybrids. The young Émile (played by a very good Paul Kircher)whose mother has already transformed into a large, hairy tardigrade and is therefore locked up in a center from which she escapes in the first part of the film, is in turn transforming into a sort of cross between a man and a wolf.
The process of metamorphosis is not like that of the cinematic werewolves, it is slow, painful and irregular. Trying to hide it from the eyes of the rest of the world (in addition to finding the mother who ran away) will be one of the main concerns of the young protagonist and his father.
Unlike the misunderstanding that some reviewers have fallen into, this is not science fiction, since nothing is understood about the problem. And even less how to solve it rationally. Instead, we find ourselves in that slippery terrain where the fantastic is used as an apologue. Sometimes apologues are very successful, sometimes instead, as in this case, along the way they seem to take on a lot of ballast for which an idea in itself interesting, supported by excellent professionals at all levels (direction, soundtrack, actors, special effects) becomes a hypertrophic metaphor in which the parent-child relationship lies, the relationship with diversity, the opposition between nature and culture, the pandemic, adolescent themes. This metaphorical anxiety tends to trivialize the most original themes of the film, such as our ability to manage a dignified relationship with the animal world.
In the end, everyone remains separated in their own universe, at least as conceptually defined by Western man. Nature on one side, Culture on the other, sunk in the usual contradiction of the lost wilderness, the wild life that we sometimes seem to yearn for to save ourselves from the difficult conditions that we ourselves have created…
