Animals

ANIMALS - © 2018 Closer Productions, Vico Picture and Sound, Screen Australia, Adelaide Film Festival

Sophie Hyde's Animals, based on the novel of the same name by Emma Jane Unsworth, is an enlightening, profoundly honest and wonderfully entertaining story about growing up in the intensity of expectation and gender politics with a heartwarming and dynamic twist.

Half kitchen sink drama and half comedy, Animals is shot with a rugged documentarian-inspired aesthetic by cinematographer Bryan Mason. It holds a fantastic fusion of genre. The weight and layers present here are tremendously orchestrated and beautifully curated. The sentiment and sensibility in the screenplay, adapted by Unsworth herself, is tonally balanced in a way that educates and informs in an intertwined gravitas. Hyde's film is undeniably brash with its intentions and execution but in that loud and proud personification, it becomes assuredly charming in its conviction in the two lively characters of Alia Shawkat's Tiger and Holliday Grainger's Laura, who steal the show with electrifying and deep-felt emotional performances. 

Shawkat turns the dial to an eleven here in a performance that purely works out of an enigmatic underbelly but one effortlessly and gloriously conceived. A character that promotes and provokes Grainger's Laura throughout life decisions with proceeding chaos and implosion inevitably waiting in the wings, Shawkat's role is somewhat of a plot device. A brilliant and subtle creation that causes the film’s gigantic wedge while still feeling organic and dynamic. 

If Shawkat takes the crown of comedy, then her co-star Holliday Grainger takes the more emotional dramatic material in a resulting performance that is a powerhouse of conviction. Grainger's screen presence is gigantic, engulfing the screen with charm and charisma. Taking on a vibrant multi-faceted role in terms of relationships with her family and romances, Grainger delves into a more detailed exploration of herself in terms of growth.  

Grainger's chemistry with Shawkat is the glue that keeps this feature together in a film that takes quite a few dark and abrasive avenues. Even with comedic intentions, Animals always remains to be profoundly intelligent and actively conscious of its arcs and projection of its characters at a tender age of understanding themselves and the world revolving around them at a pace they might not understand nor want. 

Animals is released August 2nd 2019