Animalia

At the start of Animalia, written by director Sofia Alaoui, Laurie Bost, and Raphaëlle Desplechin, a bird flies above a misty lake. As it swoops, a wingtip draws a perfect line on the still water. It is a beautiful shot that could only be the result of CGI or lots of luck, and it perhaps serves as a reminder of how far from such poetry digital effects usually take us. It is, of course, true that we barely notice good CGI at all, but it is also true that the art has felt stale since Forrest Gump. This frame-long shot of a distant bird had the same wonderful quality as the twirling feather that opened Zemeckis’s American opus. Or they were lucky. I don’t know. I do know it was gorgeous and strange.

This film deals so heavily with a deep mystery that it almost feels a shame to discuss it. Co-writer and director Sofia Alaoui has expanded the sci-fi ideas within her earlier, award-winning short film So What if the Goats Die? into a mysterious and philosophical Moroccan road movie set in what may be the end times.

“…a girl with a modest background who has just rocketed up in society after marrying a young poultry magnate.”

At the opening of Animalia, the pregnant Itto (Oumaima Barid, who impresses mightily here, channeling the otherworldly beauty of a dusky Anya Taylor Joy into her terrific lead), is fit to pop any minute, luxuriating at her in-laws’s opulent mansion. She is a girl with a modest background who has just rocketed up in society after marrying a young poultry magnate. Ill at ease with this change, she is introduced to us hanging around with the kitchen staff as her mother-in-law glares on.

Her parents and husband leave on a day trip, and it is at this point that a state of emergency is called, with army convoys roaring past. Mystified and warned she is no longer safe at the mansion, Itto sets off to reunite with her family, only to find the country around her is changing in eerie and surreal ways.