Only the Animals (2019) Directed by Dominik Moll
7A
Only the Animals starts out as a conventional mystery. A woman’s car is discovered abandoned on a snowy road in central France. She is nowhere to be found. For a time, we see interactions among a small group of people going about their business. Presumably, some of the suspects will be members of this group. And some are. We watch as they respond to news of the missing woman. Nothing seems out of the ordinary; none of these people seem especially suspicious. Then we start focusing on individual characters, and suddenly this seemingly by-the-book mystery spirals into the strangest places imaginable. Different suspects begin to receive scrutiny, including a teenage boy from the Ivory Coast who has never set foot in France and knows none of these people personally. The bits of information that we saw at the beginning dealing with the characters interacting with one another are revisited and given a completely different and much more sinister context.
Only the Animals has as many twists as an anaconda on amphetamines, and I could do nothing but smack my forehead in wonderment at the final shot.
Only the Animals is a Swiss watch of a movie but brilliantly put together and fiendishly clever. Best to just sit back and enjoy the ride. There is also a beautifully constructed subtext about how loneliness can drive everybody more than a little crazy.
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Top Ten so far this year
First Cow, Reichardt, US
Seducio da Carne, Bressane, Brazil
Beanpole, Balagov, Russia
Before We Vanish, Kurosawa, Japan
Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Hittman, US
Only the Animals, Moll, France
The Portuguese Woman, Gomes, Portugal
The Forest of Love, Sono, Japan
The Load, Glavonic, Serbia
A Land Imagined, Siew, Singapore