Only the Animals

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.

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.

I wasn't sure what I was getting into, but I actually really liked this movie, but not for the reasons I thought I would.

While the literal English translation for the French title is "Only The Animals" but apparently, in French, a bête can also be a stupid person in addition to a beast/an animal; seul can mean alone. So, IMO, a more apt English title would be "The stupid lonely people"? Lol.

And the story is, in fact, about lonely people making stupid decisions in life and the consequences of those decisions. It is about the extent to which human beings go to deal with loneliness, primal/animalistic tendencies of love and sex; makes you question the moment at which human desire takes over morality and intelligence.

In most crime dramas, the 'what is being told' takes the cake. In this case, the 'what' isn't all that special, but 'HOW this story was told' blew my mind. There storytelling is non-linear, so those of you that enjoy this, surely check this one out. It's told from the perspective of five people (very tough to edit with 2-3 storylines, let alone 5) separately, and everything revolves around a single incident. I really liked how smooth the transitions were, the editing of these perspectives and how the story slowly unfolds, revealing what happened. There are various moments at which I went "Oooooh! This is why that happened back then!" It feels like a jigsaw puzzle falling into place with pieces you didn't know you had to look for. The acting in this movie was good too.

Would totally recommend this if you're looking for something new!

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.

Subtitles did not distract from this twisted plot. I remained engaged throughout. Don't question the storyline, as it's a tad improbable. It's something different, in a good way.