Ao, le dernier Néandertal

Perfect dentistry and cosmetics galore in the land before time.

The movie is about last of the Neanderthals, named Ao, who after loosing all his clan ventures back from Siberia to Southern Europe where he came from, to find his brother, Oa.

The film is set in pretty much realistic environment and the main guy is believable Neanderthal, though maybe little bit softer at heart, than we imagine Neanderthals would be.

We see realistic scene of his ugly Neanderthal wife giving birth to child. Realistic scene of Ao and his mate fighting bear and so on... So we prepare ourself to dig deeper into movie with documentaristic approach, we are going to see prehistoric life of humans and Neanderthals but after Ao's departure from Siberia and his first meeting with humans, the problems start.

Giving that the action scenes of the movie aren't all that impressive, the love theme is not so original, there is little drama or tension that can capture your attention, it would be smartest thing to continue the movie in only available way to make it stand-out and original - I mean, making it as realistic, as possible and while it started good in that direction, it failed miserably very soon.

Ao meets human girl who has the appearance of top-model, apparently shaves her legs and armpits and is just too damn sexy and unbelievable for all her surrounding people and nature.

From that moment we get cliché-driven, stupid love-escape story with predictable end. Good bye realism... good bye exploring of prehistoric life... good bye the most interesting part of the movie.

I understand that it's NOT documentary and director has all the right to soften the harsh prehistoric world, but it's just too much.

This could be worse if girl couldn't act. Fortunately she can, and does it pretty good actually, but alas, she can't save the movie.

This kind of cinematography could have success in only one case, but somewhere along the production director went the very wrong way.

Overall, mediocre film

Really a fascinating French film, concerning a Neanderthal man and his relationship with a really attractive (more advanced) species. A very difficult movie to pull off and with any degree of emotion and sensitivity but 'The Last Hunter' is very well pieced together, nicely paced and with some cool action sequence. Anyone expecting loads of prehistoric beasts will ultimately be disappointed but 'Ao' is so much more. A touching, alternative love story.

Jacques Malaterre, a maker of TV fiction (mainly TV films and series episodes), discovered prehistory and more generally speaking - the history of man - when he was chosen to direct the highly successful documentary "L'odyssée de l'espèce" (2003). He was so captivated by the matter he was assigned to explore that he gradually became a specialist of the subject himself. With the help of famed paleoanthropologist Yves Coppens as a co-writer and scientific adviser he also directed "Homo Sapiens" (2005) and "Le sacre de l'homme" (2009). So it is hardly surprising to see him further explore his favorite subject in a new work, the difference this time being that he has chosen the big screen to express himself in preference to television.

"Ao, le dernier Neandertal", which illustrates the thesis (confirmed by recent discoveries based on DNA analysis) that some Neandertal and Homo Sapiens had offspring together) undoubtedly benefits from this change of scope, which does not mean that it is the best in Malaterre's four-installment saga. Very spectacular indeed, the film has epic qualities when it comes to Ao's struggle for survival in all weather conditions, aesthetic assets when it describes the beauty and cruelty of nature of wild life. And actor Simon Paul Sutton is very believable as Ao, the desperate creature who sees all the members of his clan die around him, managing to express his feelings mostly through looks, grunts and body language. Which is some kind of a feat. Last but not least is the creation of a consistent specific language (that the viewer does not understand with the exception of one or two words). Too bad then that Malaterre resorted to a commentary in modern language to explain exactly what happens. Jean-Jacques Annaud had been able to do without such an expedient in his amazing "Guerre du feu".

On the other hand, for all the modernity of its scientific approach, the film is nothing else but a boy meets girl story, complete with the usual clichés: boy and girl don't get on/ love is born/ and they live happily ever after. Worse, the female lead, Aruna Shields, is too pretty to be true. Luckily, her acting is good, which partly compensates for the initial mistake, but you need a good dose of suspension of disbelief to really come into this aspect of the story.

Despite this weak point, "Ao" remains worth watching. Even if a few details leave to be desired, you really feel you are living a long long time ago constantly asking yourself whether YOU could have survived in such a hostile environment. This is enough to justify the price of your movie ticket, I think.

First of all , the narration ruins everything. From the first scene . The film then seems to be a documentary . Not anything else . Maybe it was intended so but still they could have found a better voice too. More cinematic . Too bad for the money . The lead Ao is great as performance but Aki is a bit ''too much '' in her performance. The director seems to not see this . Two . For this kind of money they could get much better cinematography . Which is a big part of any movie . (See Alpha 2018 ) . The story is interesting and brilliant at times though . Three. Music ,again , for this money is bad too . Sound seems to be good enough though. Anyway ,it shows why the movie didn't make money . And it feels too unreal at times too. I guess the director wanted a lot of accuracy of the era but then again we can't know exactly how they lived back then . We never will . Worth watching anyway . Cheers!