French film The Animal Kingdom by director Thomas Cailley provides a healthy dose of magic realism

The Animal Kingdom is no ordinary “creature feature”. For a start, it’s French-made, so it would always be a little different. In many ways, the two-hour-long movie that opened the French Film Festival in Singapore at the end of 2023 embodies many of the characteristics of French cinema.

When director Thomas Cailley began work on the project, he could scarcely imagine what would hit the world during COVID-19. Adopting and adapting an original treatment by Pauline Munier, the film’s backdrop depicts a global epidemic in which human beings mutate into animals. Not all of them, just some.

The hows and whys are hardly mentioned; the audience simply has to accept the premise in a film that is a delightful mash-up of a monster movie, a sci-fi romp, and a coming-of-age tale with a soupçon of romance. 

Less is more

For not spelling things out, director Thomas Cailley deserves credit in putting together what is a quintessentially French film — despite the genre melange — in that it is studied, makes demands on the audience, and is nothing if not thought-provoking. It’s also slightly quirky, with horror and humour frequently juxtaposed.

Play

What would almost certainly have turned into a mega-blockbusting CGI-fest in the hands of Hollywood’s finest has been made into a gentle, deliberately unspectacular examination of the human condition and our role as a species in the natural world.

When drawn on the film’s main themes, Cailley mentions science fiction only in passing. “It’s a character-driven story,” he says, “and an adventure movie. It’s about the emancipation of Émile and what it’s like to be a father.”

This may seem slightly at odds with a backdrop of human mutations wandering around in the woods, but the director found himself with two fine actors at his disposal to manifest his vision. Actor Romain Duris plays the father, François, to Paul Kircher’s Émile, the son. They have wonderful chemistry on screen, creating the necessary, occasionally mundane realism in the phantasmagorical landscape.

Kircher, in particular, is superb. “He’s like a sponge,” says Cailley of his young actor. “He absorbs everything and always makes himself available.” Kircher’s control of his body is complete as he gradually transforms into an animal — a wolf, we suspect — and the actor himself is grateful that the film was not laden with special effects.

“We didn’t use a lot of ‘green screen’,” says Kircher, “and we didn’t shoot a lot in a studio. We’re in a real place, a real forest, which is better for depicting a real situation.”

Kircher, who’s just turned 22, is a star in the making and a thoughtful actor. “In some of my scenes, I had to imagine that it was 1,000 years ago, and I was alone. How would I act with no social rules, no nothing? It had to be real.” 

This sense of reality is a Cailley trademark. “I always shoot in a natural set,” he claims. Cailley also eschews the obvious, preferring to hint at what’s out there with teasing glimpses. The “less is more” approach lends power to the piece and also helps the actors.

Kircher only used prosthetics in his transformation, which mostly allowed him to be himself, but with ever-increasing tweaks. He grew hair where there shouldn’t have been, and sharp claws emerged from under his fingernails. It enabled the actor to be completely natural in a wholly unnatural situation. It’s tempting to allude to pubescent changes, but there is already so much thematic allusion. 

A reflection of the social climate

Racism, speciesism, climate change, and even immigration all rear their heads in Cailley’s opus, but there’s nothing overtly didactic about any of it. While Pandora’s Box is crowbarred open with all the mutations taking place, there’s never a sense of imminent, uncontrolled, and uncontrollable carnage. Life goes on.

But there is the suggestion that humans must be more accepting of differences. Does the film explore the intolerance of “otherness”?

“That’s one of the themes, yes,” admits Cailley before insisting, “I’m naturally optimistic; I believe in the human mind and the human capacity for invention.”

The Animal Kingdom as a film, is imperfect. The pace is slightly uneven, and the ending is a tad overwrought. But it is a compelling and necessary watch. It has heart, and it has soul. 

French films are never shy when taking on big issues and metaphysical subjects, and Cailley’s film takes on quite a few, painted onto the canvas of a coming-of-age story and the love between a parent and a child. 

Questions about our relationships with other species and the world around us have to be asked and answered. “Maybe we can find another way to connect ourselves to our environment,” concludes Cailley. “Maybe it will be ok. Maybe it will be nice. Maybe.”