Seules les bêtes

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.

"Only the Animals" is a Drama - Thriller movie in which we follow the disappearance of a woman and how the lives of five people are linked to it. Each person has his/her secrets and he/she does not want to reveal them to anyone.

I liked this movie because it had a very interesting plot that contained plenty of mystery and it was well combined with drama, something that made the movie even more interesting. The direction which was made by Dominik Moll was very good and he presented very well the whole story from different perspectives without making it confusing or creating plot holes. The interpretations of Denis Ménochet who played as Michel Farange, Nadia Tereszkiewicz who played as Marion, Laure Calamy who played as Alice Farange and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi who played as Evelyne Ducat were all great and the combination of their characters fitted to the plot. In conclusion, I have to say that "Only the Animals" surprised me so, I highly recommend everyone to watch it because I am sure it will amaze you.

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.

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.