Writers: Thomas Cailley and Pauline Munier
Director: Thomas Cailley
People have started to mutate into animals. Not your average dog or cat, but more striking ones like pangolins, chameleons and octopuses. In Norway, humans and beasts have adapted to co-exist side by side but in France these new hybrids are kept in centres and given pills to slow down the metamorphosis. In The Animal Kingdom, director Thomas Cailley creates a world that is both strange and familiar.
Rising French star Paul Kircher is Émile who travels with his father to the South West of France so that they can be nearer to his mother – now an exotic kind of monkey. She’s soon to be transferred from the city to a secure centre near a quiet town. However, the coach taking her there crashes and she escapes, with a bunch of other hybrids, into the lush countryside.
Émile’s father hangs his clothes outside the holiday chalet that he and his son are renting in the hope that his wife will smell his scent and return to the family. It’s not clear whether he will return her to the centre or not, but he will support and love her in every way he can even though she no longer recognises him or Émile.
Meanwhile, Émile enrols at the local school. When asked, he says his mother is dead. The locals are intolerant of the new animals that live in the nearby woods. Most of Émile’s classmates call the creatures ‘critters’ or in French ‘bestioles’; this term becomes an insult as it removes the once human aspect from these hybrids. The townsfolk are disgusted by the bestioles and approve of the army’s presence who arrive to catch them.
Of course, this film could be enjoyed as a straightforward sci-fi romp, but as the hybrids are hunted down, other interpretations are possible. Is this the way we treat immigrants? Or is this the way we treat young people with mental health problems? Cailley keeps his film open to many other readings.
The fear of mutants is also the focus of The X-Men and there are echoes of this franchise in The Animal Kingdom, although these mutants lack the superpowers of, say, Iceman or Storm. When Émile, a wonderfully twitchy Kircher, hides the evidence that he too may be mutating, the film points to ideas around disease and infection, reminiscent of the AIDS crisis in the 90s and more recent fears in the Covid age.
For a film that is essentially a family drama – indeed, it is more coming-of-age than a sci-fi dystopia – the effects and the makeup are superb, with Cailley making good use of close-ups of the animals’ faces. With no big crowd scenes or depictions of mass panic, The Animal Kingdom excels in its sense of verisimilitude, much like Tiger Stripes, also at this year’s BFI London Film Festival. In this Malaysian film, a girl turns into a beast when she has her first period: A metaphor for growing up.
The acting also adds to this realness. As Émile’s father, Romain Duris puts in great work. He plays a man whose life is falling apart, although he tries to ignore the fact by putting his family first. What is he without them? Kircher’s Émile is sometimes dumbfounded with grief and his transformation is measured by tics and stumbles. Tom Mercier brings some tragi-comedy to his role of Fix, an Icarus who can’t fly. The scenes between Mercier and Kircher are especially poignant as there is more comradery in the mutant population than in the human one.
If only we could turn into endangered animals, then perhaps, we wouldn’t be headed to extinction. For all its pain, The Animal Kingdom offers a slither of hope.
The Animal Kingdom is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2023.
