The French innovation of the horror genre reaches new heights with the transformative cowgirl fright feature Animale, directed by Emma Benestan and written by Benestan with Julie Debiton participating. Nejma (Oulaya Amamra) is a cowgirl in Camargue who works on a bull ranch owned by the old man, Leonard (Claude Chaballier). She works with her fellow ranch hands Kylian (Vivien Rodriguez), Jordan (Elies-Morgan Admit-Bensellam), and Arthur (Pierre Roux) on tending the bulls and getting them ready for the area of France’s famous bullfights. She is the only woman in the work crew and is training to be the first female bullfighter. She is good friends with Leonard’s son, Tony (Damien Rebattel), and she keeps his secret that he is gay.
After her first bullfight, Kylian (Vivien Rodriguez) invites her to join him with the other cowboys to head out to the bar while Tony turns in early. Nejma parties down with the bunch as they drink up, drug up, and head out for the bull’s graveyard, where they will walk around in the dark through bull herds, all f****d up and trying to avoid getting stuck by horns. Nejma gives it a go and stumbles around, falling down near a group of bulls and blacking out. She wakes up back at the ranch with a strange wound on her arm, which she gets Tony to sew up.
Her wound starts to fester, and then another one springs up elsewhere on Nejma’s body. After waking up from a disturbed sleep, she is informed that Arthur’s body was found, all gored out by the horns of a rogue bull. There are more deaths, and Nejma starts noticing other changes happening to her body, she cannot explain…
“…falling down near a group of bulls and blacking out.”
It is moments like this that I get grateful for how lucky I am to be reviewing a movie as great as Animale. To have my wayward youth so influenced by Film Threat magazine back in the day, only to one day get the honor of writing for it, is indescribably fulfilling. Not only do I get to dig deep on my first cinematic love, the horror genre, but I get to discover new passions like French films and cowgirl movies.
Then my dear editor assigns me a French cowgirl horror movie. This is as good as it gets, and so is Animale. The film is high cinematic art painted with the bloody brush of horror. It is the sort of elevation of this maligned genre that I have been waiting for my whole life.
There have been some wonderful art films that used horror elements, like Medusa and Climax, but here Benestan makes a horror picture that shows how high this dark art can go. It is masterfully crafted on all levels, putting it in a refined class only a few films exist in. The eye-bursting visual compositions caught by Ruben Impens knocked the air out of me repeatedly.
"… high cinematic art painted with the bloody brush of horror."
