(Canada, 90 min.)
Written and directed by Ingrid Veninger
Starring: Aaron Poole, Hannah
Cheesman, Jessica Greco, Emmanuel Kabongo, Sarena Parma, Johnathan
Sousa, Jacob Switzer.
Programme: Contemporary World Cinema
(World Premiere)
 |
| Photo by John Gundy. Courtesy of Mongrel Media. |
Toronto’s indie film queen Ingrid
Veninger walks and talks with the animals in her latest and arguably most
ambitious film The Animal Project.
The film sees Leo, an unconventional acting teacher played by Aaron
Poole (The Conspiracy), test his
students by tasking them with an unusual acting exercise that takes them out of
their comfort zones and has them unleash the beast within. The assignment,
dubbed The Animal Project and inspired by a memory from the childhood of Leo’s
son (Jacob Switzer), asks the acting class to dress up as furries and wander
the streets of Toronto.
The range of feelings and emotions The Animal Project creates is a testament both to the cast and to
Veninger’s direction as the oversized furries roam the busy city. Stripped of
their greatest asset—their faces—the actors can use only their body language
and posturing to communicate with the humans they encounter on the streets. The Animal Project is alternatively
hilarious and moving through the sheer placement of the actors in unexpected
places. It’s a feat of incongruous compositions. A big owl perched with the
pigeons on the steps of a church, for example, brings a collective laugh from
the audience while a gigantic cat basking in the sunset feels just as warm as seeing
a little kitty snuggle up in a sunbeam. The sight proves funny again when the
actor awakens from the catnap and hightails it to work.
Playing the part of an animal also gives the actors a
heightened sense of what it’s like to feel watched. The furries are like
animals in the zoo as perverts in the Annex cop a feel on the ass (one of the
female actors plays a donkey) or as passersby gawk and stare at a mouse in high
heels. The Animal Project shows the actors how it feels to act outside of
normal social boundaries, too, as virtually every encounter between man and animal
in the film goes far differently than it would between two random people in the
street. (Free hugs in Toronto might not be reciprocated otherwise.) There is
something ineffably liberating behind The Animal Project’s ability to let the
actors act more naturally than they could in real life.
The Animal Project
also seems liberating for Veninger, who makes a notable departure from her
previous films. Veninger’s other works as a director have largely been family
affairs, but this film is cast with professional actors (although Leo’s son Sam
is played by Veninger’s own son, Jacob) and it tells a story on a larger scale
with more layers and subplots than she’s used before. The result of the project
is something strange, intimate, and thought provoking. It still feels like a
family affair, too, since the camaraderie between the actors leaps off the
screen. The actors, likewise, are partners in the film as Veninger secured them
under unconventional circumstances and cast the project before it was written. Shot
with a skeleton crew and an enthusiasm for originality, The Animal Project rings of innovation and offbeat authenticity.
This quirky maplecore pic might be Veninger’s finest project to date.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
The Animal Project will be release in March 2014.
