«Seules les bêtes»: an unbalanced film

Cinema Wednesdays - Loris S. Musumeci

Imbalance. Everything is unbalanced. Starting with the characters who, by committing their lives to completely absurd acts and deeds, show themselves on screen as mentally unbalanced. The parts of the film are also unbalanced. An imbalance is deliberate, as the driving force of the story, to allow the plot to progress between a snow-covered mountain village and the heat of the streets of Abidjan. The final imbalance: Only the beasts is a testament to small points of excellence in its execution, but also to disasters.   

A woman goes missing in the mountains; the police are investigating, but it’s hard to find any leads. The only clue the authorities have is the woman’s car, abandoned on the side of the road. No body, no blood, and above all, no connections. The victim stayed at a cottage in the village for just a few days each year to rest.

This is an opportunity to get to know a couple from the village—a rather unhappy one. The husband satisfies his emotional urges through cats with young women online. The woman, a door-to-door insurance agent, was sleeping with some kind of savage who owns a farm not far from their home. But it must also be said that the victim was married, even though she had been in a lesbian relationship with another woman. I’ll tell you right away: it wasn’t the husband who, out of jealousy, killed his wife. That would be too easy.

Different Perspectives

The brilliance of the film is that it tricks us every time. It leads us down paths that are quite outlandish—yet, in fact, logical—only to then completely rule out that possibility. At the same time, we keep discovering more, yet we’re also getting more and more confused. And there are very few lies in all of this. It’s the shifts in perspective that create this effect: certain scenes are the same, but filmed and narrated from a different character’s point of view. I’ll admit that the idea is original and enjoyable, and that the result is ultimately satisfying.

But Dominik Moll didn’t get everything right in his direction; far from it. So much so that the film becomes downright tedious at times, and rather mediocre overall. The screenplay plays with the absurd. That’s fine. But above all, it’s very dangerous. You don’t shoot absurd scenes on set while cracking up with your crew and saying, «Hey, guys! What if we made a dead person talk? That’d be so funny, right!» No, no, no! I'm sorry, but that won't do!

First, when cinema ventures into the absurd, it must do so in moderation; and I believe the French have an unfortunate tendency to overdo it. Second, the absurd requires the utmost subtlety in its execution. The absurd is an element that reveals boundless comedy within a dramatic situation. The whole thing is carried by exceptional actors. Not everyone can be a Benoît Poelvoorde.

Read also: Poelvoorde in a To the station! totally absurd and brilliant

The abject weakness of human emotions

Fortunately, however, the film doesn’t rely solely on absurdity. There’s a plot. So is the humor. The actors are there, even if none of their performances really stand out. Some of the acting even borders on amateurish in scenes of completely vulgar, inappropriate, and over-the-top sexual encounters. And the cinematography? It’s strange to note that while it’s never completely neglected, the cinematography remains much more polished and carefully crafted in the scenes set in Abidjan. It seems the director was more inspired by the African city than by the mountains. Yet another imbalance!

As for the main topic of Only the beasts, it isn’t really addressed in any specific way. Although the film as a whole—albeit in an unbalanced manner—depicts human misery stemming from the loss of our connection to the environment around us. The critique of virtual friendship is very present, but even more so is the crass weakness of human emotions when people are subjected to it. Ultimately, the film may not lack intelligence, but it does lack balance.

Write to the author: loris.musumeci@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Filmcoopi