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DIRECTED BY: Thomas Cailley

FEATURING: Paul Kircher, Romain Duris, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Tom Mercier

PLOT: A plague that turns ordinary people into human-animal hybrids has afflicted a family’s wife and mother, putting a strain on the relationship of the father and son.

COMMENTS: In the opening of The Animal Kingdom, a man with one partially-formed bird wing violently bursts out of the back of a locked ambulance caught in a traffic jam and tries to flee as orderlies attempt to corral him back into the vehicle. “Strange days,” one stranded motorist nonchalantly remarks to another. Apparently a plague, disease, or curse has been hybridizing humans with random types of animals, with no way of predicting when the condition will strike. François’ wife, Émile’s mother, has caught it, and now has fur on her face and claw marks on the wall of her hospital room. Her doctor assures the family that the experimental medical treatments are working, though, and encourages them in their plan to relocate a remote town in south France so the can be closer to her when she’s placed into a new “research” facility. François, who’s a bit of an eccentric trying to instill a distrust of authority in his son, hopes to reunite the family. But Émile’s sense of smell seems to be getting keener…

Besides the birdman, we get glimpses of tentacled squid/octopus girl in the supermarket, an aardvark lady, and some sort of tree-clinging chameleon. The costuming and prosthetics are always interesting, although you may wish to see more of the mutants. The movie instead focuses almost entirely on the relationship between François and Émile, on Émile’s attempts to fit in with his new classmates, and on Émile’s anxiety over his own bodily changes. Attitudes towards the mutants are mostly revealed indirectly: the widespread use of the emerging slur “critters” to describe the victims, the schoolkids’ lunchroom debate about the issue (with opinions ranging from coexistence to shooting them on sight), and the fact that the entire phenomenon seems to be considered a police matter as much as a medical issue. The hybrids flee whenever authorities approach, and the government is building what may amount to detention centers.

No explanation is given for the transformations, medical or otherwise. Completely uninterested in the science fiction behind it all, The Animal Kingdom instead critiques humanity’s insistence on morphological purity, and on our instinct to exile community members for any deviation. Transphobia might be the most obvious contemporary touchstone here—though the afflicted take no voluntary steps to transform their bodies—but the movie’s lessons can easily be transferred to any group of outsiders: minorities, immigrant, queers, the mentally ill, and of course, furries. Realistically, most people without a direct family connection to a victim quickly turn against the critters; besides the fear of the unknown, identifying a group of outsiders immediately elevates your own status as an insider. Only a minority of fundamentally decent folk offer empathy, support, or accommodations. When asked if he still kissed his wife after her transformation, François replies, “It was still her. It changed nothing.” The movie may refuse to unfurl its metaphor, but its moral is clear. The Animal Kingdom is, ironically, humanistic.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“‘The Animal Kingdom’ is quite emotionally vivid at times, and fine acting supports Cailley’s weird ideas, making the picture feel real while it gradually becomes a fantasy.”–Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com (contemporaneous)

The Animal Kingdom [Blu-ray]

• Cannes Film Festival Nominee: Un Certain Regard
• Winner Grand Jury Prize-Palm Springs International Film Festival
• Includes English Dubbed Version

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