Only the animals - Storie di spiriti amanti

Seules les bêtes starts off with the disappearance of a non-local woman that owns a house in a remote rural area somewhere in France. Multiple people's lives in that area are shown in this story, they are all connected in one way or another through work or simply because they use the same supply store. All of them, except the missing person, have lead fairly dull lives: They are regular people living fairly far apart, don't exactly like the life they are living and seek a way out of the day-to-day by the only limited means they have.

One seeks it online, another through adultery or through (creepy) fetish imagination but they all want the same. All of these lives are somehow stitched together, carefully explored and eventually coming together in a not every day, yet mostly recognizable story of loneliness, unemployment, deceit, feeling unloved, wishing for, and seeking a better life, real or not, even risking the little they have got and cross the invisible line.

Seules les bêtes is an enjoyable drama/crime/thriller movie for all sorts of people, it explores both sides of the coin.

This thriller is full of surprises. The standout is the actress Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. I last saw her in the Italian movie "Human Capital" in an Italian speaking role, and she gives another amazing performance this time in an entirely French speaking role. She is a very talented actress!

I really enjoyed this. A slow burn of a story, simmering away just enough to keep you hooked. A portrayal of the isolation and desperation of people wanting to escape their own lives (for all reasons from mundanity to poverty). Some are even so desperate they are happy to lie to themselves if it means they can live in a fantasy world rather than their own. Sad, clever, human, understated. A rare gem.

The trick of circular stories or vantage points has been used many times with different levels of success; Akira Kurosawa RASHOMON is perhaps the most famous of all; however in that case there were different points of view (and colours); here the story is constructed with events related to each individual character forming a whodunit. The main problem is that not everything is completely explained; leaving the second story, the most intriguing of the whole, unresolved which makes it perhaps even unnecessary. Still your interest is almost always maintained until the last two twists at the end which seem made to add a last touch of madness and the irony. There is no much that can be said without revealing the mystery. A rich woman disappear in a farmers region and almost every character is related to the events somehow. In brief; it is not a great entertainment but if you are tired of the conventional crap, this one has a lot of surprises.

Very clever and so entertaining . Couldn't keep my eyes off the screen to see what was going to happen next .Great acting from everyone involved....a first class thriller.