Only the Animals

Nadia Tereszkiewicz

Dominik Moll's Only the Animals is a very good 2019 French drama based on Colin Niel's novel Seules les bêtes. The plot concerns the disappearance of a woman during winter in the rural Massif Central region of France. The film interweaves the stories of eight or so characters whose lives intersect with that of the missing woman. The film is divided into four parts, each part focusing on one of the main characters. Since the narrative hinges upon revelations resulting from the film's changing perspective and time shifts, I won't play the spoiler by spilling the beans. Only the Animals contains enough elements for three thrillers: unburied corpses, a lesbian affair of mismatched partners, additional adultery, Ivory Coast catfishing, and more. Moll handles the unwieldy plot adroitly and, as usual for his films, elicits a host of accomplished performances; especially by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Laure Calamy, and Denis Ménochet. 

Moll has directed six features in his career. I'd put Only the Animals in the top rank of his films along with his debut, Harry, He's Here to Help and his most recent feature, La Nuit du 12. Moll has proven to be a consistent talent, but his work, thus far, lacks the underlying passion and grandiose vision necessary for great cinema. It is telling that the material he generally works with, like Only the Animals, culminates in the hermetically sealed closure of irony rather than the catharsis of tragedy. Still, a film like Only the Animals may be exactly the type of material suited to Moll's misanthropic rationalism. Moll does a wonderful job of drawing out the themes of loneliness and repetition compulsion that emanate from Only the Animals plot and locale. His pans intimate a world of shifting perspectives in which his characters navigate without a lodestar.