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Film Review: "Bestiaire"

I knew there was something interesting about “Bestiaire” when I first read about it. It was a curious synopsis with a terrific still of some Beast of Burden staring right at me. It seemed a movie not to be missed. If you can`t watch this film https://ip-locations.org/ free in your country I will leave the https://ip-locations.org/ link here.

It has a 72 minute running time and it was shot in Canada with considerable French influence (the film seems more Canadian than French). Written and directed by Denis Cote (an independent filmmaker living and working in Quebec), the movie is enigmatic and unpretentious. Cote’s film is entirely focused on the documentation/photography (using very unconventional and absorbing angles) of various animals in different locales. It contains hardly any dialogue (a sprinkle of human voices here and there), no explanations, no musical cues designed to let one know when and how to feel, and there’s no beginning, middle or end. It’s a formless offering that somehow emerges with excellent form at the end.

This flick is not compatible with such childlike impatience. “Bestiaire” is a pure film experience about perception and cognitive awareness. You don’t fight it--you let it flow over you. The filmmaker is clearly experimental (in the best way), fiercely independent, challenging, and he’s scanning deep cinematic reservoirs. “Bestiaire” is a deliberately paced meditation on animals that unfolds like a moving photo album. It contemplates a suggested imbalance of co-existing organisms, their survival of the changing seasons, the labyrinths/confinements they inhabit (many shots of zebras, big cats, etc. appearing quite unhappy in their holding chambers) and the parallel lines of observer and observed.

This film played at the Berlin and Sundance Film Festivals. I’m sure the audiences were bewildered. It’s a challenging and demanding movie for those who enjoy challenging and making demands of their own perceptions. And who doesn’t want to see a rhino hosed down and fully bathed by a caring and efficient human being? When’s the last time you saw that in a film?