动物王国

评分：

0.0 很差

分类：科幻冒险地区：法国年份：2023

简介：近未来，神秘症状在人群间扩散，恐惧在空气中曼延。原因不明，只知感染者初期会产生骨详情

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更新时间:2024-02-27

动物王国影评：[Film Review] The Animal Kingdom (2023)

Sophomore feature from French filmmaker Thomas Cailley, whose debut LOVE AT FIRST FIGHT (2014) cops him a César Award for Best First Feature Film. Almost a decade later, THE ANIMAL KINGDOM leads the annual award with 11 nominations and ends up winning 5 (all in technical departments, visual effects, cinematography, original music sound and costume design).

The story is a conventional apologue about tolerance, acceptance and familial bond, while the backdrop is set in a today’s world where apropos of nothing, strange mutations transmogrify ordinary folks into animals, who are summarily institutionalized. When a vehicle crashes in transit during a stormy night and many mutants are at large. Father-son duo François (Duris) and Émile (Kircher) take the matter into their own hands to look for their beloved wife/mother, who is among them. Meanwhile, the latter must come to grips with his own latent mutation which will alter his entire universe.

If the X-men scenario sounds a shade tired - the kindred spirit between Émile and Fix (Mercier, in unrecognizably ornithological costume and prosthetics), a man turning into a bird, is ebulliently built only to get butchered for the pathos that feels formulaic and arbitrary - Cailley and his co-scenarist Pauline Munier’s script astutely instates the mainspring in François and Émile’s interpersonal relation, a father and his teenage son, the pair manifest all the usual suspects of their co-existence: starting from casual persiflage, rapport, to that generational awkwardness, parental frustration until clash emerges, then a dramatic reconciliation, which sublimates into full-on understanding and support. Only the two-of-us-against-the-world rebellion arrives belatedly near the coda, while the middle-part of the diegesis gets bogged down in Émile’s own adjustment to his new-found situation and confusion (the romantic interlude with Billie Blain’s Nina, his ADHD classmate, becomes quite the longueur), a reunion with his mother is not a complete victory without the presence of François, an equal footing in this story.

Heading into middle age, Duris enters his “hot daddy” era with more savvy and compassion, but it is Kircher, son of screen goddess Irène Jacob, who comes off more impressive in canalizing Émile’s sea change with striking clarity and conviction. Meanwhile the film rather cramps the style of Exarchopoulos’s tough-as-nail police officer Julia, whose peripheral function leaves much to be desired.

Admittedly, THE ANIMAL KINGDOM’s forte (apart from the two leads) is in its visuals and Cailley’s dexterity. The contrast between the opening traffic-jam encounter shot in the broad daylight and the misty, nocturnal atmosphere shows his range, while a sylvan paradise turns into a battleground operated on a slo-mo, trippy long take is aesthetically sublime. The outstanding job of effecting a menagerie of mutants should also duly credited to the teams of make-up, costume and special effects collectively, and Cailley is also prudential in putting money into good use, a glimpse of monstrosity is always more effective than an overexposure of grotesquerie.

referential entries: Ali Abbasi’s BORDER (2018, 7.1/10); François Ozon’s THE NEW GIRLFRIEND (2014, 6.9/10).