THE STORY – In northeastern France, farmers and hunters are at war. Wild boars, too large and too numerous, are devastating crops. Brun, a grain farmer on the verge of ruin, breaks down and disappears. A year later, Fulda, an impulsive police officer, and Stéphane, a therapist in crisis, investigate. What they discover is beyond their comprehension. So is the bond that develops between them.
THE CAST – Alexis Manenti, Ella Rumpf, Vincent Dedienne, Jean-Louis Coulloc’h, Pascal Rénéric, Bertrand Belin, Jade Fiess, Bernard Blancan, Thierry Godard & Mathieu Perotto
THE TEAM – Sarah Arnold (Director/Writer), Jérémie Dubois, Olivier Seror, Romain Winkler & Mehdi Ben Attia (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 95 Minutes
“Too Many Beasts” is the kind of whip-smart French comedy with a character all its own. On one level, it’s an agrarian whodunnit, a countryside crime thriller-comedy, while also operating as a punkish farce. Still, such definitions and boxes are also what it manages to wiggle out of and evade. Can something be at once unique and still exist within a tradition? I ask, as I began thinking of all those atypical French comedies like “Delicatessan” and “Love is War,” and while Sarah Arnold’s debut feature doesn’t quite claw its way into that superlative level, it’s still a highly entertaining piece of work which is far above the average.
Deep in the provincial French countryside, the film begins by setting up a conflict between the farmers who are trying to make their work pay and their harvests grow, and the wealthy landowners who run a boar-hunting association that attracts many to try to bag their trophies. In the surrounding forests, the boars are kept well fed and numerous for the sake of hunting, but the local farmers are being driven into destitution by the damage the brutes cause to their crops. The conflict has become increasingly serious, and deep-rooted animus becomes the order of the day as tempers rise to such a boiling point that a murder is committed, and the culprit mysteriously vanishes.
Following this prologue, we jump forward a year to Sgt. Orsino (played by Alexis Manenti), a Corsican cop, arrives, apparently exiled to the boondocks of mainland France because of a psychological breakdown, the details of which will only slowly emerge under the less-than-careful prodding of cop psychiatrist, Stéphane (Ella Rumpf, who broke out in Julia Ducournau’s “Raw,” something he’s reluctant to submit to. “I’m as incompetent as any man,“ she assures Orsino when he complains about having to talk to a female therapist.
Having been demoted as well as moved, Orsino takes up the cold case of the murder out of boredom (pun intended) as much as anything, making surprising progress as he shuffles around like a rural Colombo. Initially, his superiors and colleagues are impressed by Orsino’s incisive detection, but his instability unnerves his workmates, and his perseverance raises uncomfortable questions for those in power. The police captain makes it clear that the station is essentially full of losers who have been foisted upon him. Still, his arbitrary exercise of power makes us wonder whether he is one of those who have been shifted to the side.
The screenplay is the work of several hands, and there are moments when the writer’s room can be detected in some well-worked gags, such as when Orsini and Stéphane accidentally take drugs before launching on a quixotic investigation of genuine hilarity. But Manetti and Rumpf are superb. Orsini has moments of manic joy amid his despair, like when he drives his car into the railing of the road barrier just to enjoy the fireworks of sparks the metal produces. There’s a broken relationship in his past, and he is, not to put too fine a point on it, kind of a stalker. But he is a man liberated by being at rock bottom. Stéphane, who herself has some skeletons in the closet, also has something of what Johnny Cash called “the beast in me.”
Ultimately, this is a beautifully put-together and occasionally brilliant comedy with winning performances from a deep bench of character actors. There are enough surprises throughout, and enough punkish energy as it goes through its paces. The humans and the boars create as much mess as each other in the countryside. There are hints of riot in the background and lines being definitively crossed. In the year of our Lord 2026, it is impossible to watch a film about class in which the shadow of populism is not present. And though the title warns us of this excess, maybe the nature of the beast is not what we usually think.
