THE “WORLD” OPINION – A MUST SEE
Nejma (Oulaya Amamra), 22, works for Léonard, a shepherd who raises a herd of bulls in semi-freedom. In her free time, she is training to win the next Camargue race, a sport that consists of challenging a young bovine in an arena to bring the cockade between the horns using a hook and earning points. Competitors, called raseteurs, are allowed to jump over barriers to avoid injury. No bloodshed, no killing. The show is ethical.
Beyond this folkloric discovery, Animal, by Emma Benestan, immediately presents itself as a feminist western: the heroine appears on horseback, straight and intimidating, evolves in a male environment, shows bellicosity in fights… But on a night of drinking to celebrate her first race and her adventurous spirit, she loses her knowledge in the pastures. Later, boys from his inner circle were found murdered and dismembered. Nejma perceives sounds differently, hears bulls more clearly, her body undergoes a methodical shedding. The genre – horror – gradually infiltrates her life and seems to belong only to her.
Transfiguration of bodies
Presented at Cannes in May at the end of Critics’ Week, a particularly thoughtful selection of genre cinema from the film’s 2016 screening SeriouseTHE body horror (revealing transgressive disorders of the human body) with cannibalistic emanation by Julia Ducournau, Animal it is also a matter of mutation. With the difference that it does not characterize the transition to adulthood but post-traumatic denial.
This Mediterranean Wild West flick quickly sheds its initial faux pas. Despite the rumor that a wild beast is on the prowl, there is no doubt that Nejma was sexually abused. And, against the classic rape and revenge (“rape and revenge”), the feature film offers its exact opposite – a revenge and rape. In this wild landscape of salt marshes and samphire marshes, the victim remembers nothing. In terms of cinematography, the rape took place off-camera.
Ruben Impens, the Belgian cinematographer who distinguished himself with Felix Van Groeningen and Julia Ducournau, has no equal when it comes to approaching the epidermis and giving a mystical dimension to the transfiguration of bodies that scratch, bleed, scratch, suffer. While the period saw a veritable crop of female horror feature films (Substanceby Coralie Fargeat, and soon The women on the balconyde Noémie Merlant), the genre asserts itself as a preferred vector for questioning intimacies in their social and political aspects.
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