ANNECY 2024: Sauvages Review
My Life as a Courgette (2016) set a high benchmark in animated feature filmmaking. In a landscape where volume and brightness compete for audiences eyeballs – especially with family animated films, Courgette prersented a rather mature tone without the desire to reward audiences with a dance number or promise of a sequel at the end.
Set in the rainforest of Borneo, Kéria takes in Oshi, a baby orangutan orphaned by the palm oil plantation her father works at. Her cousin Selaï seeks refuge from a conflict involving his nomadic family and logging companies and together the trio band together to fight against the forest’s destruction whilst Kiera explores her indigenous roots. At it’s heart this is a story of discovery and of finding something deep within oneself in spite of the chaos and destruction that life brings.
Writing children or even for children takes a large degree of empathy. As with My Life as a Courgette the young people in this film are not one dimensional or supplemental, they’re complex individuals with desires and goals. It would be so easy to remove a few character traits or interactions to make this into a straight children’s film about a little girl who makes friends with an ape, but the richness comes from a deeper place than the surface. It doesn’t take much as an audience member to indulge this film to be fully exposed to the sensitive direction of Barras.
The characters and world are all rendered in a sympathetic stop motion style, where texture and lighting present this stop motion scene stealing in all of it’s glory.
Oshi, Keria and Selaï traverse the jungle
The jungle itself is a character, introduced as a cluttered and stubborn trip hazard, it takes it’s time to familiarise itself with the audience, showcasing creatures and critters that make this far more than just a set filled with props – it’s a living location that the characters must navigate together by day and night. This is all lit and animated beautifully, with each leaf, raindrop, insect and twig lovingly designed and shaped in the directors inimitable style which weaves into the overall story about the indigenous peoples relationship with the jungle.
The film will inevitably be compared to its predecessor, thanks to the high benchmark that it left, but to expect the same would be a waste of the directors offerings. In search of similarity you might see that what the director did with the playground – taking a seemingly simple world and expanding it through the characters lived experience is accomplished once more, where Courgette used the playground to tell a complex and nuanced story centred around the young Courgette, this film tells a story of the environment whilst Kéria learns more about herself along the way.
Kéria and her Grandfather
Sauvages marks the welcome return of Claude Barras in the feature chair and whilst the setting might not be as familiar as the playground reality of his previous film, the immediate messages about discovering more about yourself and your past and opening yourself up to a wider world and the need to be empathetic to one another and the environment are universal for adults and children alike.