Theo and the Metamorphosis

There is some­thing Ulyssian about Damien Odoul’s ninth fea­ture film Theo and the Meta­mor­pho­sis. Much like Joyce’s epic in its wan­der­ing nar­ra­tive pro­gres­sion and gen­er­al opaque­ness, the film is a one-man odyssey: over the course of a day, hero Theo (Theo Ker­mel, an actor with Down’s syn­drome), who goes by TO, encoun­ters fam­i­ly, friends, strange visions and mem­o­ries in the depths of a French forest.

TO, in his late twen­ties, lives with his father (Pierre Meu­nier) in an iso­lat­ed wood­en cot­tage, all Grand Designs rus­tic chic­ness and mod­ern touch­es. Their dai­ly life is divid­ed between the chores of chop­ping wood, gath­er­ing mate­ri­als and ani­mal­is­tic play­fight­ing that hov­ers on the bor­der of fun and gen­uine violence.

His father is a pho­tog­ra­ph­er and wannabe lum­ber­jack. He also seems to be teach­ing TO mar­tial arts with the aim of mak­ing him a ​“peace­ful war­rior.” Such is the vari­ety and unde­ni­able wack­i­ness of Odoul’s film which defies easy def­i­n­i­tion. There’s obser­va­tion­al doc­u­men­tary cam­er­a­work at play, cou­pled with a sur­re­al­ist fan­ta­sy aes­thet­ic, while TO’s voiceover adds a poet­ic tone and inte­ri­or reflec­tion on his Down’s syn­drome, his rela­tion­ship with his father and his artis­tic pursuits.

All of this com­bines to cre­ate an enig­mat­ic por­trait of a young man that with­holds slight­ly too much from the view­er to feel tru­ly engag­ing. When TO’s father leaves for an exhi­bi­tion of his work, the pro­tag­o­nist is left to fend for him­self in some­times delight­ful ways – fig­ur­ing out how he can play table ten­nis by him­self, for exam­ple. There are more cryp­tic means, too: a pet snake becomes an empress who helps TO trans­form into a ser­pent-woman, then a nin­ja emerges in the for­est to fight him.

But, over­all, is this real­ly any­thing more than the so-called ​“mys­ti­cal dis­abil­i­ty trope” on full dis­play? Odoul paints TO as a pow­er­ful­ly mag­ic being, danc­ing around the for­est and becom­ing one with the ele­ments. While there is a play­ful­ness to this in the film, it leans towards Oth­er­ing its lead – and by exten­sion peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties – as some­how being unknown, dif­fer­ent, set apart.

This is not to say that films about dis­abled peo­ple need to focus on their con­di­tion or present it in a grim­ly social real­ist light. The sad real­i­ty is that cin­e­ma has yet to tru­ly offer equal oppor­tu­ni­ties to all peo­ple of dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties, and that means there are so few depic­tions of dis­abled peo­ple liv­ing ordi­nary lives, and there­fore apply­ing either the ​“mys­ti­cal” or ​“dam­aged” cliché can be equal­ly trou­bling. Even as TO’s quest revolves around per­son­al free­dom, indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, and reach­ing a qua­si­en­light­en­ment, there is a con­flict between his agency and the film’s meta­phys­i­cal tone.

There are small moments of intrigue and beau­ty, but these are cloud­ed by the gen­er­al sense of con­cern over the film’s han­dling of TO’s Down’s syn­drome as its cen­tral con­ceit. Not only does TO begin to feel alien­at­ed, the stream-of-con­scious­ness style and wild ideas thrown into the mix serve to cre­ate a fur­ther dis­tance in under­stand­ing. There is the sense that a touch more cohe­sion and struc­ture could have ele­vat­ed this to some­thing more interesting.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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