Magnet Releasing. 2024. Science Fiction. 130 min.
Grade: 2 out of 4
Over a quarter century after Bryan Singer’s X-Men series gave us a superhero saga as an allegory for queerness comes The Animal Kingdom, director Thomas Cailley’s thoughtfully considered—if not thoroughly considered—plea for the acceptance of others. In Cailley’s delicately-told, apocalyptic version, a genetic mutation turns random humans into animal hybrids shunned by intolerant townsfolk and hunted by government agencies trying to cure them in recovery (read: conversion) centers. However, for better and often worse, Cailley and co-writer Pauline Munier aren’t content to hit us over the head with a sci-fi and body horror-inflected lesson in acceptance. Instead, they keep their focus tight on French chef François (Romain Duris) and his teenage son Émile (Paul Kircher) as they deal with François’ mutated wife and Émile’s slow realization that he, too, is mutating. It’s a clever anti-epic approach but Cailley fails to create much dramatic tension between the central duo of father and son—the New Age François is the Most Tolerant Dad Ever from beginning to end—so the film fumbles its chance to be truly heartbreaking. The Animal Kingdom—while a noble attempt that’s stuffed with ideas and beguiling imagery—is so enraptured with its sense of sci-fi art film significance that key character conflicts feel neglected and the promise of its central conceit is only superficially fulfilled.
One can only shudder at the inevitable American remake that will surely amp up the grotesqueries and the scares, which only makes Cailley’s wobbly effort more deflating. Here the scares have a quotidian quality that bring us closer to the story, starting with the half man-half bird creature who escapes from the back of an ambulance much to the horror of François and Émile. They’re driving to the hospital for an update on François’ wife Lara who has mutated into some sort of clawed beast. Like the other mutated humans, all traces of Lara’s memory and humanity are gone, and she acts, in every possible way, like the animal into which she has transformed. When the doctor recommends that Lara be moved to a countryside facility in the south of France in the hope of finding a cure, François and Émile move with her; the former lands a job at a local restaurant while Émile enters a new school where he bonds with his neurodiverse classmate Nina (Billie Blain).
Émile is almost singlehandedly tasked with embodying the emotional burden of watching your loved one, and then yourself, succumb to such a seemingly random fate. Gangly, vulnerable, and soulful, Kircher conveys, often without dialogue, the confusion of his emerging otherness as exemplified by the claws that grow from his fingernails and the rough hairs that protrude from his back. Initially, he hides his condition from his father who is currently dealing with his own problem: the transport van taking Lara and other mutants to the medical facility has crashed and dozens of mutants, including Lara, have escaped into the forest. But with François on a nightly search for his wife, Émile has no one to articulate his thoughts and fears to, denying us a promising avenue of emotional exploration.
The idea of Mother Nature finally and justifiably telling humanity to shove off by turning us back into animals introduces an environmental theme to the mix. (François blames the mutations on artificial chemicals, although the problem’s actual cause is, wisely, never definitively revealed). It’s just one of many additional themes that the movie piles on and which only weigh it down (is this an allegory about France’s treatment of immigrants, anti-queer bigotry, a reverse engineered Covid story? You choose!). The escaped mutants are even hunted down by locked and loaded militiamen which adds a bit of dunderheaded action that makes little sense, as does Julia (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a local cop who conveniently and improbably bumps into François at all hours of the day and night. Their interaction suggests a romantic hookup, but that idea thankfully goes nowhere, as does the character of Julia, wasting Exarchopoulos’ considerable talents.
The austerity and focus with which Cailley presents everything but his themes is especially effective in the sound and the visuals, which account for all five of the film’s César Awards (it was nominated for 12 including Best Picture). Cinematographer David Cailley (the director’s brother) operates at eye-level within the lush, misty, and green forest environment giving the movie the feel of a fable, one with a mournful End of Days feel. There’s even a certain beauty to some of the half human-half animal creatures which the more bigoted citizens disparagingly call “critters.” One of the less beautiful hybrids is Fix (Tom Mercier), the half man-half bird who escaped from the ambulance in the opening scene. When Émile later happens upon Fix in the forest, their bonding is tender—Émile helps Fix to learn to fly which helps Émile embrace his new self— in a way that Émile’s scenes with his father and Billie are not.
The Animal Kingdom begs many questions about the nature of the mutations, how widespread it is, and whether humans and human-animal hybrids can live together. Cailley (whose first film was the similarly apocalyptic-minded Love at First Fight) answers none of these questions and it’s okay that he doesn’t. But the more thematic layers are shoveled onto the story and the less invested we become in the father son relationship that’s set up to be the core of the tale, the more we start thinking maybe that American version won’t be so bad after all.