TOO MANY BEASTS Review: Never Boaring But A Little Hammy

Introduction

Sometimes at a film festival, you just have to watch a movie because that’s what you can get to see at the time. This was the case for me on the last day of this year’s Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. Sometimes the film will surprise you, which was definitely the case with Too Many Beasts. You sit down in the theater and realize that apparently what you needed in your life was a French dramedy about an outbreak of wild boars and how it affects the greater community.

Synopsis

Sergeant Fulda Orsini is a gendarme who has recently been reassigned to a rural region of France from Corsica. He suffered a breakdown after a bad breakup with his girlfriend, causing him to lose his rank of Captain and essentially be shipped off somewhere to be forgotten. Stephanie Danjir is a police psychologist who has also been reassigned to the same district for reasons of her own. Neither of these people is necessarily fit to do their job. Both have short tempers, and neither is particularly good socially.

The rural area they have been assigned to is primarily a farming region surrounded by dense woods. Those woods are home to a rather large population of wild boars. Being from Texas, I am familiar with just how annoying, disgusting, and frightening a boar can be. They are not just pigs. They are aggressive wild animals that can grow large enough to cause serious bodily harm, and they can be incredibly destructive to the land around them.

The villagers do not like the boars. The local hunting lodges, on the other hand, love them because they are the game their customers come to hunt. The lodges also seem to be encouraging the introduction of larger boars into the region, resulting in massive destruction to the local farmers’ crops. Needless to say, the farmers and hunters do not particularly like each other. One farmer, Brun, apparently took matters into his own hands and killed a hunter after the boars destroyed his crops. Brun escaped into the woods and has since become something of a rural myth.

Discussion

I really enjoyed writer-director Sarah Arnold’s film. It is a little crazy, or maybe a whole lot crazy. Alexis Manenti as Orsini and Ella Rumpf as Danjir are wonderful, and they have great chemistry together. Orsini is required to attend therapy sessions with Danjir, something that starts out poorly but eventually develops into a more amicable relationship.

Their conversations are both funny and surprisingly real. Eventually, they both acknowledge that they have essentially been relegated to this place, working alongside a group of mostly inept colleagues because of their previous troubles. Arnold does a particularly good job with the dialogue between them. It goes back and forth quickly without ever feeling forced. Their conversations feel natural, even when the circumstances around them become increasingly ridiculous.

Manenti is great as Orsini. His depression over his previous actions is a little sad and, at times, actually very funny to behold. He is also probably the smartest police officer in the area, yet nobody seems to notice or particularly wants to acknowledge it. Orsini’s partner, Chaton, reminds me a little of Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther films. He’s genuine in his complete obliviousness to his lack of police skills, yet somehow believes he is one of the department’s top cops. His relationship with Orsini is also well written and consistently funny.

Further Analysis

The case itself, however, is not quite as funny and becomes a statement about privilege. Those who already have plenty still want more and better, regardless of how their actions affect the people or environment around them, as long as they get what they want. The farmers have every reason to be angry, and beneath all the absurdity, Arnold makes their frustration understandable.

The highlight of Too Many Beasts comes in a very funny third act when Orsini and Danjir have a hallucinogenic experience in the woods while somehow also successfully putting the case together. The entire sequence is wonderfully strange. Despite their condition, they keep moving forward, managing to survive and succeed almost despite themselves.

The movie is filmed fairly straightforwardly. There is nothing particularly flashy about the camerawork, but there doesn’t need to be. The highlights here are the writing and acting. The story moves at a good pace, the dialogue feels genuine and funny, and the actors do a great job of making you care about these two somewhat unlikable people. The juxtaposition of these characters at their lowest point, working a case centered around one of the lowliest and most destructive creatures imaginable, was not lost on me. Arnold does a wonderful job finding both comedy and humanity in that idea.

Conclusion

I liked Too Many Beasts considerably more than I expected to. It is something I seem to find every year at Fantastic Fest: a French film I knew almost nothing about going in, only to discover a movie with a lot of character and a good story. Sometimes you just have to take whatever movie you can get into. Every once in a while, you get lucky.

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