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Le Règne Animal
The Animal Kingdom
France / Belgium 2023
produced by Pierre Guyard, Ève Machuel (executive) for Nord-Ouest Films, Canal+, France 2, Artémis Productions
directed by Thomas Cailley
starring Romain Duris, Paul Kircher, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Tom Mercier, Billie Blain, Xavier Aubert, Saadia Bentaïeb, Gabriel Caballero, Iliana Khelifa, Paul Muguruza, Maëlle Benkimoun, Nathalie Richard, Tom Rivoire, Francois-Xavier Raffier, Florence Deretz, Louise Lehry, Jean Boronat, Nicolas Avinée, Sébastien Boissavit, Anwar El Kadi, Clément Corbiat, Célia Lalande, Maxime Sebile, Lilian Gauguin, Julien Pierre, Victoria Belen Martinez, Jérémy Marchand, Fabrice Colson, Clément Dazin, Ismael Bangoura, Maël Sauvaget, Nicolas Fabian
written by Thomas Cailley, Pauline Munier, music by Andrea Laszlo De Simone, Sebastien Pan, special effects and animatronics by Pascal Molina
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Of late, several cases of humans mutating into animals have swept the
country - and Francois' (Romain Duris) wife Lana (Florence Deretz) is one
of them. Now Francois does everything to see she gets the best treatment,
he even moves to the South with his son Émile (Paul Kircher) when she's
moved to a gouvernment facility specialized on her condition. Only she
never arrives at the facility as the bus that was to take her and several
other mutants there had a crash and all the mutants escaped - much to the
dismay of the locals, as the mutants are said to get wild every now and
again. Now Francois does everything to find his wife, wandering the local
forests at night in search for her - not exactly with the approval of his
son, who figures his mother is just too far gone to even be his mother
anymore. And he's of course also caught up in his own issues of growing up
and facing life in a new town. And then he has to notice he's starting to
mutate into an animal as well. At first he tries to hide it from everyone
as the locals are not exactly mutant friendly, instead makes friends with
an escaped mutant, birdman Fix (Tom Mercier), but eventually his dad and
his girlfriend (Billie Blain) do find out, but stand by him. And he sure
needs all the friends he can get, as the locals are gearing up for the
great mutant hunt ... This film, a blend of coming-of-age,
science fiction, animal horror and body horror, might not exactly tell the
most original of stories - it's basically a reworking of the X-Men's
recurring humans-vs-mutants theme -, but it sure has a lot of heart to it.
And it sure is well-made, keeping things on a relatable, down-to-earth
level, not trying to avalanche its audience with spectacle, and placing
its well-conceived action sequences wisely. That all said, the film, at 2
hours and 10, seems to drone on forever, making the same point over and
over, and at times just not driving the plot. Basically this could have
been really good if cut down by half an hour to an hour even, as it is
it's still rather ok genre entertainment, falling short of its
capabilities.
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review © by Mike Haberfelner
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Robots and rats,
demons and potholes, cuddly toys and shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill Your Bones to is all of that.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to -
a collection of short stories and mini-plays ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle,
all thought up by the twisted mind of screenwriter and film reviewer Michael Haberfelner.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to
the new anthology by Michael Haberfelner
Out now from Amazon!!! |
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