(Canada/France, 72 min.)
Written and directed by Denis Côté
People are animals. We live in different environments and
have different habits than our four legged friends, but we also have a lot in
common. People are often as restless as a wild zebra, for example, when they
flutter about town in a series of scheduled activities to occupy their days.
Others are like a fat little tabby cat, since they like lounging around after
filling their bellies. To each his own, but at least humans can often choose
between running and slothfulness.
The animals, however, look back at the camera. They stare
into the lens’s eye with the same curiosity that one looks upon a big fat
hippo. “What could you possible want with us,” the animals seem to ask as the
look obliquely at the camera and soon tire of boredom, “we’re no more
interesting than you are.”
The animals vary between showing indifference and hostility
in Côté’s observational film. Some animals enjoy having their bellies filled,
but most of them seem to want to escape. A gazelle stamps its foot, out of
either impatience or a need to warm itself up from the winter cold, and a group
of zebras shuffle about their closed quarters with an antsy energy. As
beautiful as some of these animals may be, they look oddly out of place in
rural Quebec.
Not only in the snow-laden exterior shots do the animals
seem poorly suited to their environment. Half of the film captures the animals
in interiors, and the smart use of negative space reveals the small cramped quarters in which these big beasts are
housed and shows that wild animals don’t enjoy captivity. Côté makes the argument
that animals shouldn’t be housed for the viewing pleasure of humans without
offering a shred of voice-over or dialogue. Bestiaire
makes its point through images alone.
When the humans finally make an appearance in Bestiaire, the film shows the contradictory
problem of appreciating these animals while protecting them at the same time.
One of the humans observed in Bestiaire
is a taxidermist. In what is arguably the longest sequence of the film, the
camera watches him skin and stuff a duck. The taxidermist has the gift of an
artist, for the bird looks beautifully lifelike. The dead duck appears in a
static display like all the other animals in Bestiaire do since Côté keeps the camera mostly stationary;
however, the dead duck doesn’t offer the same sense of excitement because its
glass eyes don’t return the gaze.
Côté observes the beasts not to make a point about animal
cruelty, for the animals at Parc Safari seem to be treated rather well, but
rather to simply underscore the pointlessness of housing these animals in the
first place. There’s an undeniable banality to the long takes of Bestiaire and there’s an even greater
sense of discomfort, too, in having a series of exotic animals stare back at
you for an hour and ten minutes. They probably dislike being watched as much as
you dislike them watching you.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Bestiaire is currently available on iTunes.
