The Animal Kingdom: a feat of special effects for this French SF gem
Director Thomas Cailley had to fight to achieve his vision and ambitions.
A French science fiction film is rare. A science fiction film that is a masterpiece is even more so. Behind this little miracle, named The Animal Kingdomhides Thomas Cailley. A young director noticed with his first film, The fighters, dedicated to Cannes (two awards at the Directors’ Fortnight) and the César Awards (best first film, best actress for Adèle Haenel, best hopeful for Kévin Azaïs). Enough to whet the appetite of this filmmaker and screenwriter who passed through Fémis.
For his second feature film, Thomas Cailley sees things big. After trying his hand at science fiction on the series Ad Vitam (broadcast on Arte in 2018), he embarked on a French-style mutant story, with special effects, mixing genres (thriller, fantasy, teen movie …), between Akira and Stranger Things. An auteur Blockbuster, as we see too little in the French cinema landscape. A project whose ambition grew at the pace of its creation, almost placing its initiator in a situation of jumping into the void.
“We found ourselves several times at a crossroads, facing our own questions. What movie was it supposed to be?“, asks Thomas Cailley in the latest issue of Première, currently available on newsstands and on our online store.
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“I realized that we couldn’t just be intimate. It begins with a 17-18 year old teenager whose body begins to change, OK, we could almost be in a ‘normal’ French auteur film. But then his relationship with his father must change while around them, society slips. All the characters will have to take a moral position, obey, disobey. When questions of order and institutions arise, we need the police, the hospital, the army… We are no longer in the small end of the lens but on the large scale, it’s like a funnel reverse. And none of us were 100% sure we could do that.“
Cailley prepared the film for a year and a half, calling on comic book artist Frederik Peeters to create concept art, which can be admired on his Tumblr. In Rampage, Peeters already addressed the theme of mutation in a post-apocalyptic world. His drawings served as the basis for the half-human, half-bestial creatures of the Animal Kingdom But that was only the beginning of the process…
Animation designers still had to come into play, then visual effects specialists: prosthetists, makeup artists, studios in charge of VFX… Especially since the director wanted to have a hybrid approach to special effects, like the character of the birdman, played by Tom Mercier, particularly impressive in the film. The actor was partially made-up on set, and his appearance (including feathers and wings) was then finalized on the computer. Enough to explain the explosion of the budget, which climbed to 16 million euros thanks to the support of France Télévisions and Canal+, and in advance on receipts from the CNC.
“I was offered to do it in English, to shoot in Alabama I think, but that was out of the question.“, confides Cailley to Première. “The story is anchored in our territory. It was explained to us that for cost reasons, many scenes would have to be done in VFX, almost in animation. And I had no desire to make this film…
So I organized a sort of month-long workshop with all the station managers, where we focused on resolving each problem by establishing shared basic rules: always starting from the human, the character, the actor, whether for the choice of scenery, camera, for the techniques chosen, for the design, helping them with make-up, set effects, cables, prosthetics.
If someone flies, they fly according to human morphology, their physical reality, their weight, their bones, not like a human-sized bird. Likewise, the mother’s creature couldn’t be digital, it’s an animatronic that weighs 900 kilos! It was imperative that the actor (Paul Kircher) be able to look her in the eyes, to act opposite her. They were constraints, but good constraints. Each time, it strengthened the themes.“
The result on screen is more than convincing, and this manufacturing process has indeed allowed the actors to fully express themselves on set. A cocktail that allowed the Animal Kingdom to be selected for the Directors’ Fortnight at the last Cannes Film Festival, and to establish itself as the attraction of this month of October in French cinemas, while no major Hollywood production is on the horizon. The bet was crazy, but it was kept.
The Animal Kingdom: a stunning masterpiece (review)
“I wanted to trust him, both on the resources allocated to the film and on the special effects, always with the fear that it would look a bit “cardboard”!“, explains Romain Duris in the film’s press kit. “In the end, his idea of mixing makeup, on-set effects and then digital technology in post-production produced a totally aesthetically successful result. We really believe it! Basically, I never doubted the success of this aspect of the film because from the start I perceived Thomas’ high standards at all levels of the project…”
