Last feature film by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, As Bestas It was released on 20 July and already has more than 100,000 spectators. Presented at the Cannes festival where he was selected, As Bestas traces the story of Antoine (Denis Ménochet) and Olga (Marina Foïs), a French couple who moved to Galicia in the heart of a mountain hamlet. Objective: to start a second life of farmer. The rural dream is quickly upset by the harshness of the natives who give them no guarantee of hospitality and that is little to say... Decryption of this sharp French-Spanish thriller despite a second half-tone.
Indomitable
Designed as a form of eight rural enclosures, As Bestas knows immediately how to set his suffocating atmosphere. The opening sequence acts as a warning or dark omen. The Aloitadores, local trainers, run on a herd of wild horses. Exit the lasso dear to cowboy, the tradition here requires that the capture be carried out on the body to body. Then engages in a respite fight to dominate the furious animal. One of the wrestlers took the neck of the equine with his arm, while the others sought to belt it. Already early signs show that the stallion is tired in the melee, while its endurance declines under the weight of the three men. The beast puts a knee down, the nostrils swell, the pulse stops packing and finally the peace seems to be restored. This slow-moving scene will remain anchored in our unconscious as an alert. In Galicia, we don't laugh at traditions.
The two main characters, Antoine and Olga, practice organic farming. They left their old teaching life to live their dream. When they do not work on the land, they restore abandoned houses to encourage the repopulation of these fields bruised by desertion. In this landscape where hands are calous and faces tanned by the sun, Antoine and Olga embody otherness. Is it the image of the bourgeois in search of meaning or, who, to conjure boredom, left the metropolis to join the countryside? Unless it's something else.
Far from the stereotypes of Parisians who since the covid dreamed of transhumance and returned to the capital, after having tasted the priesthood required by the peasant vocation, Antoine and Olga knew what they were engaging in. It's a long-standing wish. « Do you think this place is a whim to me? » Oose Antoine against Xan, the leader of the village camped by the excellent Luis Zahera. « No, Xan. This place is everything to me. It's my life plan and my wife's. » Go on. Quiet. « You'd better wake up somewhere else. » Xan answers, impassive. An impossible exchange, while everyone camps their positions.
From his own director's admission, As Bestas inspired by Dogs of Paille (1971) by Daniel Melnick where Dustin Hoffman sought quietness with his wife in the English countryside before seeing his home caught in flu by drunken workers. But this time, the Spanish director reverses the grammar of David Summer's character. Antoine is his inverted doppelgänger. He is as much a silent-looking character as a gentle and friendly husband, hermetic by nature to physical violence that he abhors.
Tomorrow from dawn to the hour when the countryside whitens
In fact, « It's as much a thriller as a love story. » concedes Denis Ménochet. A couple who aspire to live simply, without artifice or pretension. They have in no way taken refuge in a city utopia where the urban exodus would be fantasized and they are not naive, however, as to whether to integrate among natives whose entire generations precede them. They are people all that are more ordinary and simply want to fulfill their dream.
And yet, two worlds clash. The premises that sabotage their daily lives have not had the chance to choose. They were born here; They'll die here. They are poor and their only hope of earning a little money is the installation of these wind turbines to which Antoine fiercely opposes. Rather than sketching a binary portrait of a class struggle between good and bad, rusty and cultivated, Sorogoyen prefers to proceed in nuances. Moreover, this is what strikes the spectator when we discover that Antoine is hostile to wind turbines who, according to him, implant for derisory compensation granted to the premises, far from urban eco-bobos.
When at the bistro, Xan, the village's alpha male, pressured Antoine to know why he had opposed the wind turbines, he did not fail to say that he agreed that others in this room had not been favorable. Because they're from here exactly. It is this segregation between native and come, which will raise the crescendo tension and which recalls thatAs Bestas is above all a social tragedy. This conflict is insoluble when dialogue is no longer enough, that choice is in reality exclusively conditioned by belonging to a social class.
« It's a love story in a green thriller »
There is a naturalist side in Sorogoyen's approach. Initially Denis Ménochet did not speak a Spanish word. It was on filming that he learned the basics of language, which fits perfectly with the story of an emigrant in Galicia. In order to gain in authenticity, the two French bathed in the filming in the midst of Spanish actors who were talking with each other in Catalan or Galician. « The director let actors eat or smoke a firecracker to reveal scenes of life » also tells Denis Ménochet.
Pointy, Sorogoyen's aim was to show the daily life of a couple, in brief life bursts here and there. That's probably what makes his movie so incarnate. After the opening sequence, the director chose to tighten the node flowing from a skull with a sequence plane at the edge of the corner, where the camera slowly rotates around the table, while Xan unravels as a godfather whom one would dare not contradict. An endless monologue – with one or two replicas – where everyone stood silent in front of charisma and eloquence. There won't be any discussion blowing Sorogoyen half-word. Like the saloon of the westerns, this environment is exclusively male and one would almost hear flies flying.
« One night, I was so drunk that I had to stop. I lay down and saw the starry sky. When I woke up, I was here in this valley. After that, I was obsessed and I thought, when I was old, I'd settle in. And I will be free »
As Bestas is a sensitive film but which fishes on its last third where some characters burst in without shouting. The rhythm then seems more disheartened and the tension gives way to something unexpected. It is felt that Sorogoyen wanted to address other topics, including the relationship between Olga and his daughter (Marie Columbus). Là où le début du film s’affranchissait des conventions, on semble rattrapé par des luttes intestines familiales inutiles à ce stade du récit, d’autant plus quand les ficelles étaient particulièrement moins fines cette fois-ci.
Nettement moins subtile, l’altercation mère fille agace et sonne comme un aveu d’échec d’avoir peut-être laisser Marina Foïs trop en retrait au début du film. Le personnage d’Olga renverse alors complètement la vapeur, alors qu’il était bien plus effacé au départ. Il aurait sans doute fallu dessiner les choses différemment pour éviter le côté trop artificiel généré par cet épilogue parfois maladroit. Surpris par ce virage narratif soudain, on respire enfin dans ce dernier tiers alors qu’on s’attendait à suffoquer. Sans doute qu’As Bestas se perd en cours de route à partir de ce point de rupture et c’est dommage.
Malgré cet écueil, As Bestas reste un thriller remarquablement réalisé. Le jeu d’acteurs fait mouche autant du côté espagnol que du côté français. Mention spéciale à la prestation glaçante de Luis Zahera qui campe le rôle de Xan. Toujours sur la ligne de crête entre domination et soumission, Denis Ménochet impose également sa carrure et son style singulier. Jamais vraiment gagné par la peur, Antoine est toujours à la frontière de l’irréparable. Alors qu’il pourrait choisir de s’effacer, il se rend au bistrot du village, argumente tant bien qu’il peut et essaye quoiqu’il arrive d’échanger, lorsqu’il ne prend pas ses propres garanties pour défendre ses intérêts. Quoi de plus juste finalement que le cadre pyrénéen pour symboliser la frontière qui sépare ces deux mondes inconciliables. Un film à voir malgré ces quelques défauts.
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