FrightFest Halloween review – Animale
Though it has a contemporary setting, writer-director Emma Benestan’s first feature has the folkloric feel of something like The White Reindeer – it could be an oft-told legend, and spins out a fairly slight story of cruelty and revenge in a very specific, unusual, fascinating context. At heart, it’s a female revenge story – but a swirl of complicated characterisation makes its heroine’s situation less cut-and-dried than usual (though did her only sincere male friend have to be the gay guy?).
It’s set in the Camargue, France, and the world of bull-running, a rodeo-type sport which is at once absurd and highly dangerous – players have to snatch rosettes from the horns of angry bulls, all the while keeping out of the way of their horns by not just running but climbing wooden arena walls. Nejma (Oulaya Amamra) is the first woman to enter the contest, much to the disapproval of her mother who worries that she’ll be gored in the stomach and be unable to have children. She’s encouraged by Tony (Damien Rebattel), the gay son of patriarch bull-farmer Léonard (Claude Chaballier) – who was crippled in a previous bull-run, which perhaps makes his support for Nejma taking his place in the goring line almost sinister … while alpha macho top hand Kylian (Vivien Rodriguez) isn’t exactly hostile or discouraging as if he’s learned not to be too obvious about how he really feels but plainly isn’t a fan of the idea of women in his sport.
After her first bull-run, Nejma heads off with the other runners for a party in the country – necking booze and pills without question – and collapses in a misty field surrounded by bulls. She’s obviously attuned to how dangerous or not four-legged animals are, but neglects to be as mindful of the men around her – who set off all sorts of alarm bells for the viewer. Waking up with memory loss, Nejma also starts to have physical symptoms which align with a group of female-skewing metamorphic body horror films (Ginger Snaps, Contracted, Bite) as her toes fuse, she grows a tail-stub and hair sprouts as if she were turning into a bull – a rare instance of transgender lycanthropy, though that’s not stressed – while other bull-runners start turning up trampled, gored and mangled by a supposed rogue bull who becomes the subject of a determined hunt. French-Algerian Benestan has a real eye and pulls off some startling images – a bird’s eye view of black bulls herded by riders on white horses which makes big mammals look like scuttling bugs, the potentially ridiculous business with mooing animals looming ominously in foggy fields.
Also outstanding is Amamra, who makes Nejma always admirable if not always likeable – yes, she’s a woman breaking a glass ceiling, but it’s hard not to equate her chosen sport with bull-fighting and think of it as an exercise in cruelty to animals. How would we feel about a feminist film in which a woman defies sexist attitudes to become a champion whale-harpooner or seal-clubber? But Nejma’s transformation also suggests her real kinship is with animals rather than the men who mistreat them both.
Discussion
No comments yet.