Itto is a young Moroccan woman who lives with her husband Amine, son of a local caid accustomed to the opulence of the wealthy Moroccan families close to power. While she was enjoying a day of tranquillity away from her mother-in-law's bliss and gaze, the country suddenly became a state of emergency following unexplained supernatural events. Alone, she'll have to get help to join her husband...
An interclass character
In Arabic, a caid means « Commander »In the Maghreb, it is a person who enforces laws and regulations. By the powers conferred on them in a more or less institutional way, these caïds are « strangely rich in some areas », explains the director Sofia Alaoui, itself from a privileged environment. She discovered Europe by her mother, Morocco by her father and China where she travelled, she explains.
At the crossroads of different cultures, the director may have more commonalities than one imagines with the character of Itto. The latter is a character between two social classes. Coming from a modest environment and rushed into opulence by the benefit of her marriage, the young woman really did not belong anywhere. If the appetite of any social class for the upper echelon as the horizon to be reached is a reality that is no longer to be demonstrated, it is also a burden for those who gravitate in the limbs of two universes that everything opposes.
Thus, the place of money occupies a central place in the film. With every problem, Itto will first seek the solution by taking out its indecent liasses of banknotes, especially in these mountain villages where life is harsh, far from the splendor of rich coastal cities like Casablanca. Negotiating any relationship with others is systematic, like this brief scene where her husband, well dressed in his immaculate shirt, gives money to a stranger without even thanking him for the help he brought to Itto. The gesture supplants the word.
However, it would be wrong to see an idealisation of rural areas in the face of the indecency of dominant classes, which have been largely achieved. Apart from Fouad's unwavering moral stature, the rural inhabitants also maintain a permanent relationship to money, the bakchiche being the « Universal currency », particularly in the countries of the South.
We are also thinking of these successful dining scenes that systematically take on the appearance of banquets with this in-laws. The luminous photograph of the interiors of the family villa and the care given to the chiseled composition of each room slices with the natural plans outside, with these mountains filmed without any unnecessary emphase or fireworks. On the contrary, the villa with royal palace airs would almost recall a painting in the choice of colors and the meticulousness brought to the least detail.
Know yourself
This point of departure from Itto, which really has no place anywhere, is ideal for creating doubt. Pushed into the real and deprived of the power of money become vanity, faced with certain individuals who have nothing to do with its social status, Itto is forced to adapt. It is then that the irruption of the fantastic (which finally occupies a very marginal place in the film of Sofia Alaoui) comes to act as detonator and questioning at all.
The prayers of Itto are mocked by Fouad, a peasant much closer to the real. This last ape these automatic incantations which put to the fate of God and which no one really believes despite their omnipresence in Muslim societies. The journey of Itto is as real as it is inside, while it is understood that an alien presence would pass through beings, starting with animals, then men. Monotheistic religions would replace an animist aura from elsewhere. The director explains her approach:
« I thought that aliens could have a visible and invisible envelope, but that their souls could be able to travel and incarnate in our earthly world: animals, humans... »
Like the cave allegory, humanity would be chained to sterile beliefs. We think we see the truth, when it's only an illusory shadow. This is the observation made by Itto during a vibrating monologue as an epilogue, « Everything was already there, but we didn't see it. ». The outcome would be communion with nature and the need to connect a disconnected world. This horizon recalls in its own way the mission of Sam Porter Bridges, character of the video game Death Stranding, in the imperative need to connect what separated humanity.
Gott ist tot
In his approach, Sofia Alaoui refuses to demonize those aliens who envelop and suddenly enthralle beings. Their face through living beings is benevolent to Itto, although it will be regretted that the treatment of these beings did not benefit from a little extra narrative anchoring. On this point, Animalia fails by leaving too much room for doubt about this strange presence, without necessarily mastering all its consequences. For example, it is difficult to understand the means deployed by the army, helicopters and heavy vehicles, while the threat never showed, nor even visible. Don't imagine an alien invasion movie!
Another choice taken by the director, she did not wish to offer any « resolution » to his movie. However, the lack of explanation leaves an impression of artificial issues at times, a pretext for raising the question of faith. If the subject of God's death (in all its forms) is an interesting postulate, it is felt that the director herself is bathed in an indecisive form of agnostic crisis, to which every response is met with permanent doubt.
Despite the beauty of his epilogue chanted as a poem in the past rather than in the present, as if to imagine another world that would have been extinguished to bring forth another, Animalia Unfortunately leaves a feeling uncompleted. The criticism of religion is present, but there is something missing to give it content, despite the words of Itto. Like a Zarathustra of modern times, the young woman resolutely (and can be a little too suddenly) converted in an incantatory tone:
« There was always a manager who was the fault. To wash ourselves from our remorse by respecting in fear a superior being, our only salvation. A being we called God. »
À ce moment précis, Itto s’adresse à son fils comme espoir d’une nouvelle société à construire sur d’autres fondements qu’on devine moins artificiels. « Ce film est à la fois sur la fin d’un monde mais aussi sur la naissance d’un nouveau » raconte Sofia Alaoui. En guise de réponse, on pensera à cette citation d’Emile Durkheim pour illustrer cet épilogue mystique : « Les anciens dieux vieillissent ou meurent, et d’autres ne sont pas nés ». Le spectateur, resté sur sa faim, s’interroge : fallait-il pour autant tuer les Dieux pour s’enchaîner auprès d’autres ?
À cette anxiété très contemporaine et légitime face au délitement d’une époque dont le seul dogme inébranlable semble être les tables de la loi du Marché, d’autres lui opposeraient le désenchantement d’un monde plus proche du nihilisme que de nouveaux espoirs à bâtir. Animalia a été récompensé du Prix spécial du jury au Sundance Film Festival et malgré notre critique mitigée à mettre en perspective avec un premier long métrage, il est probable que la filmographie de Sophia Alaoui gagne encore en maturité et mérite d’être suivie avec attention dans les années à venir. Animalia sort en salle dès demain partout en France.
Le plan de l'”orage” approchant avec ses éclairs verts avait attiré mon attention dans le trailer du NIFFF sans que je sache de quel film il s’agissait ^^ l’ayant raté, tu m’intrigues avec cette critique, je pense que j’essaierai de le rattraper à sa sortie physique 😉
Je suis également très intrigué par son sujet et ses thématiques. Du coup, j’essaierai de le visionner lors de sa sortie sur support physique… Si HD, bien évidemment ! 😉