It is a film whose images haunt you for a long time, which no longer makes you look at a raptor, a dog or the shadow of the forests in the same way. After Les Combattants in 2014 with Adèle Haenel, and the series Ad Vitam in 2018, director Thomas Cailley signs The Animal Kingdom, presented at the opening of the Un Certain Regard selection at the 76th Cannes Film Festival. Romain Duris and Paul Kircher, revealed by Christophe Honoré's Le Lycéen, play a father and his son, whose family breaks up when the mother is struck by a disease that no one knows how to explain: she gradually transforms human beings into animals.
To discover
- Join La Fabrique Littéraire Madame Figaro, between writing workshops and exclusive meetings with prestigious writers
- Madonna: the sulphurous life of the popstar at the heart of the podcast Scandals
Anxieties due to a pandemic, rejection of what escapes "normality" but also adolescence, relationship with nature, virtues of change and metamorphoses... Thomas Cailley signs an abundant film, which borrows as well from the fantastic or the teen movie as from the comedy. All populated by hybrid creatures that gradually reveal themselves to our eyes, "critters" for those they frighten and repel, but whose strange beauty we tame, over the course of the images. Romain Duris and Paul Kircher themselves still seem amazed.
In video, "06400 Cannes", our postcard since the 2033 Film Festival
Madame Figaro.-What seduced you about The Animal Kingdomwhen you read the script?
Romain Duris.-We were coming out of a very strange period that marked us all, that of the coronavirus. We were in a daily life already a little transformed, and from the first page of the script, it clearly made like a resonance, while going further with these animal transformations. We wonder how people, or young people, will handle this. And how a father will manage his relationship with his son, trying to protect him but evolving with all this. It was like the continuity of two complicated years, with a cinematic dimension and a beautiful and rare story.
Paul Kircher.- What I liked was this path of transformation from adolescence to adulthood, told through fantasy and comedy. All this is specific to the universe of Thomas Cailley, whom I had already loved a lot in Les Combatants.
You talked about COVID, but how does this film relate to other aspects of our time?
R.D.- It's a film about how man handles difference. How we accept it, how we tame it, how we want to channel it, park it in centers. To manage it at best, and therefore control it.
P.K.-And on our ability to adapt to change. It can also be a driving force, a force that keeps us going.
There are many images in The Animal Kingdomthat stay in your mind for a very long time. Is there a scene on set that you will never forget?
R.D.- There is a scene in a kitchen, where father and son venture into a place that is scary. They confront each other and find themselves at an impasse. We realize that we are witnessing the separation of two worlds, which become different. It's a scene with a lot of rage, a lot of intensity. We started shooting around 4am, in an almost daze. It was a very powerful moment.
In video, Romain Duris and Paul Kircher, on the poster of "Animal Kingdom"
On set, what did you learn from each other?
P.K.- I learned a lot, a lot from Romain, he gave me a lot on set. It is thanks to him that I was able to "search" this film so much. I had the chance to be with him for 3 months and to be able to observe him. He is inspiring in the sense that after making so many films, in the place he is today, he finds a balance between his work and his life. As an actor and as a man too, he taught me a lot.
R.D.- I, too, enjoyed observing this energizer, which is so often in the unexpected. And even then, because we stayed close. The pleasure of observing each other, of listening to each other, of being together really nourished our roles.
It smells like a question that we inevitably ask ourselves when we leave the film: if you were affected by this disease, which animal would you like to turn into?
R.D.-What must already be said is that when you leave the film, you almost want to have this disease. We want to be an animal rather than stay with these humans who are sometimes ... a bit extreme. What animal would you like to be, Paul?
P.K.-A dog, for its agility, speed, smell, its side close to the ground too. It's small, it goes fast, it can hurt. But it is also not the strongest animal.
R.D.-Me, a doe, it moves me enormously. There are many, but at the same time it is very wild. I like the way they appear, disappear. I like it when you see them at the edge of the woods, at nightfall or in the morning. When I take a train, I always look for some. When that happens, it gives me strength.