French-German Director Dominik Moll’s latest film, Only The Animals, is a gripping, atmospheric French thriller about love and money and how the two interact.
The film is set in both rural France, high up on a plateau during a bleak snowy winter, and hot, noisy, colorful Abidjan on the Ivory Coast. Alice (Laure Calamy) is a carer, in a soulless marriage with surly farmer Michel (Denis Menochet). She’s having an affair with one of her clients, the slightly odd, indifferent Joseph (Damien Bonnard). When a Parisian visitor to the area, Evelyn (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) goes missing, a story unfolds involving Marion, a beautiful waitress (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), and Amande, a young internet hustler in Abidjan (Guy Roger N’drin). Everyone is interconnected.
The story is told in five chapters, each from the objective point of view of a different character. This is a very original film structure and each chapter gives us more clues to solve the mystery of the disappeared woman.
Adapted from Colin Niel’s book of the same title, Only the Animals is a modern story about the pursuit of love that’s easy to connect to – we all need our own version of love to believe in. Each character is somewhat alone, and desires love. Everyone attempts to achieve their version of ideal love in a pretty clumsy way, leading to strange events that often bring out the worst in everyone. They all have a great capacity to project themselves into a story that doesn’t quite exist in reality. Each person also has their own secret world and all the characters end up being connected to each other, albeit somewhat emptily – reflecting modern society. I can’t tell you much about the plot without giving it away – all I can say is that the plot is very cleverly constructed and this combined with excellent casting and beautiful panoramic cinematography make this very human story highly recommended.
French with English subtitles
From Cohen Media it opens Theatrically in the US on Friday, October 29 in New York (Quad Cinema) and
Los Angeles (Nuart) followed by national expansion, in UK streams from Curzon Home on Amazon UK Review: Ris Fatah Queerguru’s newest contributor (when he can be bothered) is a successful fashion/luxury business consultant who divides and wastes his time between London and Ibiza. He is a lover of all things queer, feminist, and human rights in general. @ris.fatah
Labels: 2021, French thriller, review, Ris Fstah
