The Ani­mal King­dom – first-look review

It’s pos­si­ble to map var­i­ous dif­fer­ent bat­tles for indi­vid­ual free­dom onto Thomas Cailley’s gor­geous­ly warm and inven­tive sci-fi dra­ma. Set in a world in which some humans have start­ed mutat­ing into ani­mals and been sum­mar­i­ly locked up in recov­ery cen­tres designed to reverse their trans­for­ma­tions, the nar­ra­tive tra­jec­to­ry is set in the oppo­site direc­tion, towards lib­er­a­tion from social pres­sure and emer­gence as one­self, crea­ture­ly as it may be.

Surly teenag­er Émile (Paul Kircher) and dad François (Romain Duris) are com­pelled into clos­er rela­tions as mum is becom­ing a large pri­mate. Her doc­tor rec­om­mends that they relo­cate to a small town with a cut­ting-edge recov­ery cen­tre. So, they up sticks with their adorable and sup­port­ive dog in tow. Short­ly after­wards, an emer­gency vehi­cle con­tain­ing crea­tures goes off the road releas­ing them into the wild. François is con­sumed with wor­ry and – aid­ed by a jad­ed police offi­cer (Adèle Exar­chopolous) – spends all of his time search­ing for his ape wife in a near­by forest.

Mean­while, Émile is try­ing to set­tle in at a new school, fend­ing off scruti­ny about why he left his pre­vi­ous life behind. Nina (Bil­lie Blain) asks intru­sive ques­tions, then swift­ly and sweet­ly apol­o­gis­es, explain­ing that she has ADHD and tends to blurt things out due to her rac­ing mind. This is the first overt sign that Le Règne Ani­mal (The Ani­mal King­dom) is cod­ed to be neu­ro­di­ver­gent friend­ly. To the cognoscen­ti, the rest of the film unfolds along this alle­gor­i­cal spine.

Cailley’s gen­er­ous imag­i­na­tion is felt in the mag­i­cal way he uses prac­ti­cal effects to ren­der human-ani­mal hybrids. Bale­ful intel­li­gent eyes look out of a man sprout­ing wings, a girl with fab­u­lous ten­ta­cles, and a character’s daugh­ter now trans­formed into a plump and ungovern­able seal. Paul encoun­ters these crea­tures with the secret knowl­edge that he is like them. In vis­cer­al scenes that evoke Julia Ducournau’s Raw and John Fawcett’s Gin­ger Snaps, he rips out the wolfish claws grow­ing beneath his fin­ger­nails, will­ing him­self not to become what his body wants him to become.

Anchor­ing what may sound like a rather involved plot are a tri­umvi­rate of for­mi­da­ble and unflashy per­for­mances that con­vinc­ing­ly sell this ambi­tious­ly wrought world. Kircher is a rev­e­la­tion, chang­ing the way that his body moves accord­ing to the stage of his trans­for­ma­tion, while vet­er­an French actor Romain Duris finds and flex­es the most minus­cule emo­tion­al muscles.

It’s unclear whether Nina is also becom­ing a crea­ture or whether she just does not reg­is­ter species. Her fledg­ling, under­stat­ed romance with Paul is not pow­ered by dra­mat­ic dec­la­ra­tions, but rather the soft mir­a­cle feel­ing of out­siders help­ing each oth­er to belong. The pow­er of Cailey’s work is such that the sen­si­tive nuances of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, that are not afford­ed much space in more sweep­ing films, uphold entire scenes.

Although Cail­ley broad­ly sketch­es out an intol­er­ant social back­drop where peo­ple see crea­tures as prob­lems, he is far less inter­est­ed in show­ing the machi­na­tions of bru­tal oth­er­ing, à la clas­sic crea­ture-fea­tures such as King Kong and E.T. Rather the whole film builds to the hard-won release of show­ing the type of love that becomes pos­si­ble once you show peo­ple who you real­ly are.