Animals | 2013 Outfest Review

What Are Friends For?: Fores’ Debut Slow Burn Bizarre Falters at the Finish

While it’s most memorable element will undoubtedly remind audiences of Donnie Darko or a more sinister version of Seth McFarlane’s Ted, Spanish filmmaker Marcal Flores’ debut, Animals, resides entirely in its own weird little universe. A nightmarish coming-out tale, the strange and surreal take a subdued backseat to dry humor, though a prescient uneasiness always seems to gnaw at the outskirts of the action. But Fores’ doesn’t manage to land the ship smoothly, and an overtly dramatic final few frames considerably diminishes the methodical menace established by the protagonist’s anticipated instability.

Pol (Orial Pla) is an introverted teenager that lives alone with his older brother, Llorenc (Javier Beltran), a cop that gruffly tries to keep an eye on him. Pol spends a majority of his time alone, playing or listening to alternative rock music and corresponding with a tiny Teddy Bear named Deerhoof, who only Pol can hear. Deerhoof, who speaks with a robotic inflection and in English, much like Hal the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, hears all of Pol’s deepest secrets and gives him advice and comfort. At school, Pol hangs out almost exclusively with Laia (Rosier Tapas) and Mark (Dimitri Leonidas), though he’s oblivious to Laia’s attraction to him.

As Llorenc discovers that Pol is still conversing with the teddy bear, he buries the stuffed toy in the backyard. At around the same time, a new, mysterious boy named Ikari (Augustus Prew) joins the student body and Pol finds himself fascinated from a distance. When a girl Ikari hangs out with is found dead, Pol finally meets this brooding stranger, and the bond over the work of cartoonist Charles Burns. Slowly begins the dissolution of his other friendships, as well as Deerhoof, who continues to speak with Pol even though his physical form was dug up and launched into the same body of water where the dead girl was found.

As its title would lead you to assume, animals (humans included) are a main motif in the film, right down to the sound design, where blaring samples of music are used to transition between scenes, abruptly cut off to the sound of crickets and other various forms of wildlife. The unknown extent of menace at the onset of Animals recalls (but isn’t nearly as disturbing as) Carter Smith’s 2006 short Bugcrush. The puppeteered Deerhoof manages to be as sweet as he is creepy (aren’t all best friend relationships?) and he’s a striking element to a tale that would seem much more pedestrian without him.

Fores’ smaller observations pertaining to Pol’s soon-to-erupt sexual desires are obvious, if somewhat nonchalant, such as Pol’s desperate attempt to hold on to heterosexual desire by making a pass at Laia at a most inopportune moment, or his obvious titillation at Ikari’s pocketknife, with which he quickly finds he likes being pierced by. So it’s disappointing that in its final moments, Animals descends into unprecedented madness that feels out of place (and worse, laughable), when a much more oblique and subdued finale would have better suited the gloomy coming out of the possibly deranged Pol. However, Animals looks and sounds great, and cinematographer Edward Grau (whose credits include A Single Man and Buried) deserves credit for the evocative and moody imagery. Likewise, Natalie Ann Holt’s original score, as well as several tracks from the apocalyptically inclined postpunk band A Frames contribute to the film’s discordant, if not quite masterful portrait of late adolescent angst.

Reviewed on July 13 at the 2013 Outfest Film Festival.