Animal, the sophomore feature from writer/director Sofia Exarchou, asks the audience to consider the workers, in this case, the performers, at a luxury hotel for tourists. The timing of the film hitting festivals is very prescient, what with the current labour strikes happening in Hollywood. One of the major stories to disseminate on the final day of the SAG-AFTRA contract negotiation extension deadline was from the New Yorker, with many members of Orange is the New Black. One of the glaring takeaways was that, despite being on a hit TV series, many of the cast members were working second jobs. While the characters in Animal are not working on a series that 50 million people (at least) had watched to completion, we are told they are working at the best hotel in the area. And yet they live in a rundown area and, when they are told that a club is hiring dancers, they rush to try and get the extra job. We see them putting in full-time hours, they should be able to support themselves, and yet they are drowning.
Most of them are not there because they want to work at a resort. They are performers looking for any means to perform, to scrap out a life doing the thing they love, even if it’s not exactly the DREAM. There are scenes early on that show that, from the circle chat where they discuss how they ended up there (one of them because the circus closed), to post performance gabs regaling each other with other performance highlights. As someone who has spent a lot of time around the theatre world, this read as very truthful to me.
Kalia (played by Dimitra Vlagopoulou) is the veteran dancer at the hotel, the one who knows all the tricks. She moves through most scenes like an exposed nerve. She puts on all the right smiles and jumps in all the right places, but she is restless, seeking, wanting something more. Meanwhile, Eva (Flomaria Papadaki) is seeking in a different way. She’s seeking family and community. They don’t explicitly say why she ended up working at the hotel, but between the clues left at her intro and a mid-point scene with Kalia, one can connect some dots.
Kalia, at one point, says, “We never stop, no matter what.” This feels like a mantra that she has lived by, one that has been grinding her. We see her get injured because of the unsafe working conditions at the club, that secondary job they sought because one wasn’t enough. An injury that lingers for the remainder of the film, causing her to eventually self-staple it, rather than seek medical attention.
The film has most of the touchstones of a wild summer at a beach resort town. It has drinking, sex, and lots and lots of dancing. Sometimes, the characters experience moments of genuine joy and excitement as they love the life they’re living. But most of the time, it comes off as performative. No different than any show they put on for tourists on the stage of the hotel. And that’s the kind of sadness that permeates the film and lingers with you after the music fades.
Animal had its World Premiere at Locarno 76 in their Concorso internazionale section.
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