Writers: Sarah Arnold, Medhi Ben Attia and Jérémie Dubois
Director: Sarah Arnold
The superfluous beasts in this French comedy-crime drama are wild boars, and they have overrun the village, appearing in the streets and in people’s gardens, munching on the flowerbeds. One man has had enough, and Sarah Arnold’s film begins with him speeding towards some boars in his car as they stand stupidly in the middle of the road. For good measure, he reverses over them, too.
As well as the boars, Brun also kills the man he believes is responsible for the animals’ invasion, escaping out of the hunting grounds to which they should be assigned and into the village. The murder is ritualistic, with the man’s entrails neatly buried in the ground. But then Brun goes missing, presumed to be dead. One year later, there is another spate of boar-killing. Has Brun returned to finish his work?
According to the conventions of crime dramas, a new policeman joins the force and is assigned the case. Fulda Orsini is from Corsica, arriving disgraced in mainland France. His temper got the better of him, and he has effectively been demoted to rural crime. His partner, Victor, dreams of glamorous wrongdoing in Paris and hopes that if they discover who’s killing the boars and leaving them on the drives of mansions, he’ll be promoted to the capital.
In a marvellous performance by Alexis Manenti, who previously starred in Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables (2019) and Les Indésirables (2023), the Corsican policeman Orsini is a live wire, simmering with pent-up rage. He drinks too much and goes to the village’s gay bar in the evening, flirting with men. But at work he’s sympathetic, especially to the farmers he interviews, accepting glasses of alcohol from them to forge a rapport while a disinterested Victor (a very funny turn from Vicent Dedienne) flicks through Tinder on his mobile phone.
The two policemen uncover a conspiracy that is both timely in its examination of the gentrification of French villages and fantastic in the rumour of giant boars being brought in from Poland. The story would suit a cosy-crime thriller if it weren’t for the bloody violence, the swearing and one incidence of sex in the backseat of a police car.
However, as the mystery begins to unravel, Victor is sidelined, and police psychiatrist Stéphane Danjir becomes Orsini’s unofficial partner. With her impressive facial contortions Ella Rumpf brings some excellent comedy to her role as Danjir, the ice queen at work, but when she accidentally swallows some drugs, a true adventurer. The pair make a tremendous couple outside of the boom cupboard in which she conducts her therapy sessions.
Too Many Beasts is Arnold’s debut feature, and there is enough quirkiness and political discourse in her film to keep many entertained. The denouement is a little predictable, but despite the boars, it is never boring.
Too Many Beasts is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2026 from 7-18 October.
