Into the Wild: Writer/Director Thomas Cailley Talks ‘The Animal Kingdom’
by CHAD KENNERK
Director Thomas Cailley behind the scenes.
All images courtesy of Magnet Releasing
While participating in a jury at the French film school La Fémis, writer/director Thomas Cailley read a script by Pauline Munier exploring a hybridization between humans and animals. It was a metaphor that fascinated Cailley, one that would provide an opportunity to talk about the world we inherit and the one we leave behind for future generations. Cailley and Munier began developing the script in 2019 and the eventual introduction of a certain world-disrupting virus validated their idea of what a new normal might look like and demonstrated how quickly humans adapt in unforeseen circumstances. Firmly cemented as a recent memory in society, the pandemic experience provides yet another lens to view Cailley’s multi-layered creation The Animal Kingdom.
Following his 2014 feature debut Love at First Fight, The Animal Kingdom marks Thomas Cailley’s second feature as writer/director. In a world where a mysterious condition has caused a mutation in human genetics, François (Romain Duris) and his 16-year old son Emile (Paul Kircher) struggle to come to terms with their new reality. François is determined to save his wife, who is slowly transforming into one of the hybrid creatures that now populate the planet. Hollywood films spend millions of dollars to create worlds that look and feel far more fake than this one. On a reported budget of €13–15 million, Cailley and his team have managed to imbue the story with a variety of visual techniques to create an environment that feels both cohesive and utterly convincing. From the animal work of the actors, to the make-up, puppetry, and digital effects, there’s creativity in every frame.
The Animal Kingdom held its world premiere as the opening night selection of Cannes Un Certain Regard and earned Cailley the Lumières Award for Best Director, as well as a nomination for a César Award. The film brought home the César for Best Visual Effects, Best Costume Design, Best Original Music, Best Sound, and earned Cailley’s brother David Cailley Best Cinematography. As the film arrives on premium video-on-demand from Magnet Releasing 15 March, Film Review talks to writer/director Thomas Cailley about the wild ride of making The Animal Kingdom and bringing the thoughtful fable to the screen.
In conversation with writer/director Thomas Cailley
Film Review (FR): Like the transformations in the film, you developed the project over a period of two years. During that time, what were some of the major moments in the evolution of crafting this intimate and universal tale?
Thomas Cailley (TC): The first thing was, I wanted to use this metaphor of mutation to shed light on the mystery of parent-child transmission, of passing things down between two generations. The hard thing to figure out, that we had to deal with, was whether we had to explain the origins of this mutation. It’s something that we actually wound up fighting against, because whenever we had people read the script, they were always asking us to explain, but I had the feeling we should keep this a mystery. Otherwise, the film would spend the whole time running after its ‘why?’ We would have to get into – how did it happen, we have to find an antidote, and who is patient zero? It would have been a constant long chase between the film and its own concept.
We made the choice to start, not with the first person who is stricken with this disease or mutation, but two years later, once this situation has already entered into people’s lives and has already changed the world. At that point, the question is no longer ‘why?’, but ‘how?’ How do we live? How does Émile manage his private life? How does the family adapt? How does society adapt? In that way, we made space for the characters and the exploration of the different genres within the film.
(FR): You rely on the power of the actor to tell the story of the transformation physically, vocally, and emotionally to great effect.
(TC): Certain roles required a lot of physical preparation. It’s rare for a young actor to be in almost every shot of a film that features action, adventure and emotion, day and night for over 60 days. Paul worked rigorously. Prior to filming, the cast worked extensively with our choreographer, Stéphanie Chêne, to explore the character’s body language, movements and perception of the world around them. The same went for Tom Mercier, who plays Fix, a bird-man who is in a very advanced stage of the mutation. We had to mould and scan his entire body to build him prosthetic wings and give him new skin, which was pigmented like a bird and partially feathered. Besides undergoing 6 hours a day in the make-up chair, Tom worked hard at jumping, stretching and sculpting his body into that of a dancer. Fortunately, early on in the shooting, I felt that we were reconnecting with the primary elements of acting; dressing up, inventing one’s own animal, running, jumping, screaming and flying.
(FR): How did the actors navigate where they were in their transformation, did you shoot sequentially?
(TC): We tried to shoot the major blocks of the story chronologically, but of course the shooting schedule had to be adapted to constrictions, of which there were many, related largely to the heavy prep work needed for make-up, prosthetics, robots, etc. We always tried to start from the actor’s body. The shoot, despite the fact that it was a large, heavy crew, we managed to preserve space at the core of that for the actors, to always start from them. For instance, Émile’s mutation is really told through his body; more so than through dialogue or special effects. It’s how he moves, how his senses change, that tell us that. That, therefore remains really central to the story and the whole enterprise.
(FR): How did you work with your visual effects team to find the appropriate blend of cinematic techniques–because although there are some digital enhancements, everything is happening in camera and in a real location, which creates for the audience a world that feels both vivid and grounded.
(TC): At the beginning of preparation, I had the impression that we were going to have to choose the best technology possible. Very quickly, we realised that we were actually going to have to combine all of them, while privileging giving the biggest part to what was alive, organic. We spent a lot of time casting, looking for people who had specific bodies or particular or peculiar ways of using their bodies. We helped them as much as we could with practical effects on the shoot – make-up or prosthetics – when those weren’t sufficient, we would use animatronics, and when the animatronics weren’t sufficient, then we used digital effects. What that led to was all the creatures, and even all the shots, involve a different blend of effects. There’s two great advantages to that. We don’t use any green screens, it’s always a body, there’s always someone in front of the camera. The second is that there’s always a different combination of effects, which means the eye of the viewer can never really come to rest long enough to understand what the effect is.
(FR): Speaking of bringing real locations to the screen, your brother’s cinematography is so lush and rich. How did you capture the biodiversity in the film?
(TC): Prior to the writing process, we scouted out potential locations, so that we have a setting in mind before heading into the storytelling. The small provincial town surrounded by an immense forest is not just the setting of a fairy tale, it is also that of my adolescence. When you cross the Landes de Gascogne, it is easy to reduce the landscape to a succession of pine forests and cornfields, but in the middle of the man-made forests, there are natural oases and untouched lagoons. These are magical spaces, unchanged for hundreds or even thousands of years. They are not well documented and difficult to access, but once you get there, it’s like stepping back in time. In just a few hundred metres, you go from a field of aligned trees - a silent industrial forest - to rich and untamed spaces where plant and animal life is thriving. The forest comes to life before your very eyes. I really wanted these landscapes to have their place in the film, because they almost tell the story of the characters’ journey in and of themselves.
We studied old maps, spoke to tree enthusiasts, and also looked at satellite images, although this meant having to identify all of the black spots in an area covering the Gironde, the Landes, and part of the Lot-et-Garonne. During the search we found an artificial basin and a thousand-year old lagoon, it was like a treasure hunt. Along with David Cailley - my brother, and the film’s cinematographer - we covered the region until eventually we found the perfect setting, which had the primary forest, the lagoon and the tree perched over the water. However, sadly in the summer of 2022, during filming, everything was destroyed by the Gironde fires. We were forced to stop filming, the crew left, and I stayed behind in a rain of ash to look for alternative locations to finish the film. We still had 5 weeks of work to do...all in the forest. I located a black spot on a satellite image near Biscarrosse, a very touristy seaside resort which, prior to the fires, was not at all what we were looking for. On my way there, I discovered some lagoons which were completely preserved, where due to laws dating back to the Middle Ages, forestry is impossible. It was the ideal location for us: an untouched, dense forest, which is so dense that it took 15 minutes to walk 100 meters! So this was an unexpected gift, in the midst of the 2022 wildfire disaster
(FR): If you were to go through this transformation, what animal would you like to become?
(TC): I saw a very beautiful documentary about whales not long ago. I found them very gracious and mysterious, so that’s what I would say, a whale.
THOMAS CAILLEY studied at La Fémis in the screenplay department, Thomas Cailley directed Paris Shanghai (2011), a short film that won awards at numerous festivals. His first feature film, Love at First Fight aka Les Combattants (2014) was a public success. Presented and awarded at the Quinzaine des réalisateurs in Cannes in 2014, it received three Césars the following year, including Best First Film. Directed for Arte, his first series Ad Vitam was selected at the Toronto International Film Festival and elected best French series of the year at Séries Mania in 2018. The Animal Kingdom (2023), presented in the Selection officielle at the opening night of Un Certain Regard at the Festival de Cannes (2023) is his second feature film as a director.
