One of the most intriguing works of the French film landscape comes out in physical format these days:The Beast in the jungleof Patric Chiha. An exciting film as much by the radical proposition that he proposes as by the concomitance of another French release from the same literary material, we will come back to it at more length below. So put on your leather hat and your most beautiful safari shirt, and let's get together in the jungle...
Adaptation earths
After several documentaries (If it was love, Brothers of the Night) and so many fictions (Area, Boys like us), the Austrian director based in ParisPatric Chihaproposes an adaptation of the literary work ofHenry James, The Beast in the jungle. Onenovellaparticularly catchy, a veritable masterpiece of ambiguity and allusions, which in just a hundred pages weaves a metaphorical discourse around this famous "beast" that the main character of the book, John Marcher, awaits with the complicity of May Bartram.
They will thus interlace their destiny around this metaphorical fawn, this tragic and grandiose event, which will at any time be able to leap on Marcher. A book that devours itself, which we would willingly draw closer to the maestria of aTartar Desertof theDino Buzzati to cite another literary example, and who willingly invites reading before as much as after discovering Patric Chiha's adaptation.
It must be said thatThe Beast in the junglewas a fertile literary soil in terms of adaptations. Apart from the theatre or opera, the book has already been adapted by none other thanFrançois Truffaut(with other news from the same author) under the titleThe Green Chamber(1978). More recently, in addition to the adaptation that interests us today, another film from the same book will be released in just a few weeks:The Beast of theBertrand Bonello(Greater DirectorNocturamaorL-ApollonideIn particular). A film-mastodon with Léa Seydoux and George MacKay at the casting, which sinks into metaphorical meanders by looking at Lynch's side, so dense that it is almost impossible to talk about it after a single session at the GIFF... While it is not the film that we are interested in today, the concomitance of its release with Chiha's work as well as a certain disturbing gemality in its formal and thematic biases deserve to be raised.
Lynch, are you there?
But when we said that, we haven't talked about the work that interests us yet:The Beast in the jungleChiha version! And let's start with the obvious, the ideal casting that the film offers. There is indeed aAnaïs DemoustierPerfect in May, this radiant lover-confident who electrifies every scene she crosses. To give him the reply,Tom Mercier (The bird man of theAnimal rule), whose diction so particular gives his character an air lost and above ground that suits him particularly well. A couple sometimes crossing the road to La Physionomiste (Beatrice Dalle), the perfect feminine pendant of the "Mystery Man"Lost Highway. A reference that assumes and sweats, sinceThe Beast in the jungleversion 2023 has a true relationship with Lynch's work.
Labyrinthic film, assumed dreamlike aspect, white-crying photograph that recalls the work of light inInland EmpireThus, the adjective "Lynchien" would be readily attached to Chiha's project, just as it was obvious to attribute it to Bonello's work. And the common points between the two adaptations do not stop there: both make the nightclub the place where the narrative bonds surrounding May and John are formed. A chance all the more surprising as any notion ofdancingis obviously absent from the original work...
Box film
But is it okay to talk by chance? This presence of the discotheque at the centre of the two most recent adaptations of thenovellaHenry James would rather be a logical translation... Thus the salons, theatres and dinners of the literary work become these immense nightclubs, place of all possible encapsulating in its function even the story narrated byThe Beast in the jungle: After all, if you go to a club, it's to listen to music too loud, drink alcohol too expensive but also and above all waitthemeeting that will change the course of this evening. A game of prey and predator, or at least its simulacre, playing in these smoky basements crushed by the tablecloths of light and deafening noise tintamarre.
« Something was ambushed somewhere along the long winding road of its destiny like a beast on the lookout is tumbling into the shadow of the jungle, ready to leap. »
And May like John will pass, in turn, from the status of prey to that of predator. Sometimes perfectly vulnerable, carried by the rhythm of intoxicating music, sometimes reclusive in one of the dark alcoves of the box to scrutinize the moving crowd. The wait is the only valid reason for thisBeast in the jungle. The expectation full of hope and finally annihilating. One more reason to link it to Buzzati's work that we mentioned above, an additional opportunity to (again) recommend reading it. A particularly well-figured expectation in the film by pure and simple annihilation of the very notion of time...
Looking for lost time
Indeed, as soon as May and John meet under the neons of the box, time stops. Or rather no longer responds to any logic. If musical and dress styles evolve in a sense that could be interpreted as chronological, and if history understands the succession of years, nothing betrays this temporal passage to the level of the couple embodied by Tom Mercier and Anaïs Demoustier. Not a wrinkle, no aging, not even an extra white hair despite the accumulation of years... A particularly surprising bias, which will only make sense at the very end of the feature film (which we will not reveal here), and which recalls the way thatKatell Quilleveréto draw the contours of a complicated love relationship in itsTime to Love. A notable rapprochement between two films of cuvée 2023 all the more intriguing that they both feature Demoustier as a main character...
And as the wait expands, the music becomes more contemporary, loses their carnal rope to selectronize, while in parallel the previously moving crowd as a single multicephalous night organism suddenly becomes individualized. Everyone dances at their own pace. Everyone locks in a bubble. Something seems to deregulate while a spleen dripping drowns the character of May who understands before his friend the deep meaning of this Beast that has been tracking them for so many years. The inevitable seems to have set them a trap... If the end offers beautiful pictorial moments, including a Cree scene that we would gladly draw closer to a painting ofFrancis Bacon, it is not the organ of this feature film enchanting that we would almost follow in trance.
Anyway, not a word about it.The Beast in the jungle, if this is not to put the perfection of sound duo actors and the skillful articulation of the most beautiful nightclub moments of the cinema since those ofPacification Last year.
Accompanied by a 25-minute interview with director Patric Chiha, this film is (re)discovered for its release in physical format.
Data sheet
DVD Zone B (France)
Publisher: Blaq Out
Duration: 99 min
Release date: 05 December 2023
Video format: 576p/25 - 1.77
Soundtrack: French Dolby Digital 5.1 (and 2.0)
SubtitlesFrench
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