Director – Thomas Cailley, Screenplay – Thomas Cailley & Pauline Munier, Producer – Pierre Guyard, Photography – David Cailley, Music – Andrea Laszlo de Simone, Visual Effects Supervisors – Jean-Louis Autret, Cyrille Bonjean-Jean & Bruno Sommier, Visual Effects – Level 9 SX (Supervisor – Sefian Benssalem), Mac Guff Ligne (Supervisor – Bruno Sommier) & MPC (Supervisor – Cyrille Bonjean-Jean), Special Effects Supervisor – Francois Philippi, Makeup Effects – Frederic Laine, Pascal Molina & Jean-Christophe Spadaccini, Production Design – Julia Lemaire. Production Company – Nord-Quest Films/StudioCanal/France 2 Cinema/Artemis Productions/Canal+/Cine+/France Televisions/Cinecap 6/Cinemage 17/Entourage Sofica/Palatine Etoile 20/Cineaxe 4/Indefilms 11/Shelter Prod/Taxshelter.be et Ing/Tax Shelter du Government Federal de Belgique.
Cast
Romain Duris (Francois Marindaze), Paul Kircher (Emile Marindaze), Adele Exarchopoulos (Julia Izquidero), Tom Mercier (Fix), Billie Blain (Nina Moktari), Gabriel Caballero (Victor), Xavier Aubert (Jacques), Saadia Bentaieb (Naima), Nathalie Richard (Professor Beaudoin)
Plot
The world is affected by a series of mutations that are causing people to transform into animals. François Marindaze’s wife Lana has become one of the mutated. Francois and his teenage son Emile move into the countryside where Francois takes a job as a chef in order to be near the centre where Lana and the other mutations are being relocated. During a storm, one of the vans transporting the animals crashes and a number of the mutated escape into the woods. Francois immediately becomes frantic and starts trying to locate Lana. As the military become involved in the search, he gains the help of local gendarmerie officer Julia Izquidero. At the same time, as Emile settles into his new school and becomes involved with another girl Nina, he starts to undergo mutation.
The Animal Kingdom was the second feature film for Thomas Cailley, previously a screenwriter, who had first directed the film Love at First Flight (2014) and the episodes of the SF tv mini-series Ad Vitram (2018). The film was selected to premiere at the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes festival and was nominated for a host of France’s Cesar and Lumieres awards, with Thomas Cailley winning Best Director at the latter.
There have been a number of films about Human-Animal Hybrid films that go back to at least mad scientist films such as The Island of Lost Souls (1932). That era was rife was assorted mad scientists conducting ape transformations, while the 1950s brought works like The Fly (1958), The Alligator People (1959) and The Wasp Woman (1959). More recently, the human-animal hybrid has been adopted by the superhero film, most notedly in the case of the various cinematic adventures of Spider-Man. Probably the works that has the greatest similarity to The Animal Kingdom is the recent tv series Sweet Tooth (2021- ), which could well to be set a few years on in the same timeline as this where society has collapsed and the animal hybrids are openly hunted.
The script for The Animal Kingdom offers minimal explanation for the mutations – simply that it is happening, that there is fear and uncertainty from the authorities about how to handle this, although it is mentioned that Norway has taken the step of integrating with the creatures. And in truth, the film does not need any wider explanations. All the effects the film has are emotional ones and in our engagement with the characters on screen.
Father Romain Duris (r) and son Paul Kircher (l) in the woodsTom Mercier as the birdman Fix
The film’s effect is created in simple, undeniably effective touches – the opening sequences with Romain Duris and Paul Kircher caught in a traffic jam as the birdman (Tom Mercier) tears his way out of a transport van and throws guards around has a great out-of-the-blue wildness to it.. In the subsequent scene, they go to visit Romain’s wife at the hospital where we see nothing of her transformation – a shape hidden behind opaque glass, her sitting with her back turned to us and then a glimpse of feral face with only the band around the eyes shown – leaving you wondering what could have happened.
The true emotive strengths of The Animal Kingdom come once it gets Romain Duris and Paul Kircher located in their new home. The plot follows two strands – one with Romain Duris frantically trying to find his wife who has escaped into the woods. During the course of this he gains the aid of local police officer Adele Exarchopoulos, who has never looked more radiantly lovely (although is stuck in an occasional support role with nothing much to do except popping up to offer help every so often).
The other and more substantial strand follows Paul Kircher as he settles into school, develops a relationship with an ADHD girl (Billie Blain) as he starts to realise he is undergoing a transformation. In the same simple but effective strokes, we see Kircher trying to disguise the changes that start to emerge in front of his schoolmates – his feet no longer able to coordinate to ride his bicycle, teeth falling out during lunch, ordinary animals reacting to his presence in the classroom – and then of Romain Duris offering to help out, clipping his nails and providing depilatory cream.
It is during the latter sections that we see the other animals proper. There is friendship that Paul Kircher strikes up with the birdman, all before it reaches tragic end. There is a particularly good sequence near the end where Paul Kircher moves through the forest, seeing creatures of every different type emerge around him, before the soldiers come over the rise and begin gassing and capturing them. It is here – and in the scenes with a vigilante mob hunting with shotguns – that The Animal Kingdom makes its contrast between the anthropomorphic humanity of the creatures and the unfeeling attempts to deal with them with considerable emotive effect.
