After 11 features co-written and co-directed in tandem – one with Jules-Edouard Moustic, ten with Gustave Kervern, including Louise Michel [+lee también:
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entrevista: Benoît Delépine y Gustave…
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entrevista: Gustave Kervern, Beno…
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ficha de la película] — Benoît Delépine, a writer, director, actor and humourist known for his acerbic comedic streak, helms his first solo feature with Animal Totem. First discovered at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival and screened in the Feature Film Competition of the 40th Namur International Francophone Film Festival, it doesn’t mark a radical change in tone. Instead, Delépine rekindles the absurdism and social critique that have long defined his work, perhaps with an added dose of poetry, in a road movie complete with pull-along suitcase, centring on a modern-day vigilante pushing back against today’s world.

Darius (Samir Guesmi) walks along a country road, feet on the ground and head in the clouds. He wears a suit and tie and a scowling expression, and has a wheeled suitcase cuffed to his wrist. We know little about his quest, only that it is of the utmost importance and enveloped in thick mystery. As Darius trudges on, he encounters a parade of improbable characters – faces in a mottled portrait of humanity – mirrored by a second string of emissaries from the animal kingdom. As in many of his previous films, Delépine relishes the art of the vignette, the small stories nestled inside a larger one, all serving the overarching mission that Darius has set for himself. Little by little, we grasp that he is waging a broad campaign against pollution, mass extinction and humankind’s predation of nature – in short, against hyper-capitalism. The countryside Darius crosses is studded with pesticide-soaked fields, freshly minted housing estates, tarmacked roads and, indeed, the castle of a ravenous industrialist, a neo-lord with a penchant for hunting.

Guided by the recital of a children’s tale with symbolic overtones, a duel with a wannabe local sheriff and a run-in with a DIY hacker who keeps things local, Darius racks up trial after trial in this slow-burning odyssey led by a hero who evokes Ulysses as much as Don Quixote, or even Saint Francis of Assisi. Because Darius has a rather special power: he talks to animals, and they answer back. Delépine has fun recreating the creatures’ subjective point of view, tweaking lenses and filters as well as toying with the soundscape. Darius’s journey is shot in an inflated Scope format, which further heightens the overall strangeness. In the end, Animal Totem sharpens its thesis encounter by encounter, right up until a multi-step denouement that reveals the full picture. The movie emerges as an ecological fable more committed than it first appears, a forthright broadside against the very idea of “green growth”. Samir Guesmi lends his moonstruck Pierrot demeanour to the enigmatic Darius, which is disconcerting at first, before opening up in a final flourish — the choice of his totem animal.

Animal Totem was produced by SRAB Films.