«As bestas», a powerful high-voltage thriller

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One of the most incisive films of last year’s Cannes Film Festival is the absolute protagonist of the weekend in theaters: it is “As bestas”, a new feature film by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, one of the most interesting talents of contemporary Spanish cinema.
After several successes for the big screen, including 2018’s “The Kingdom” and 2019’s “Mother”, Sorogoyen reached full maturity with the remarkable television series “Antidisturbios”, before being able to surpass himself with his latest work.
At its heart is the story of a middle-aged French couple, who move to a village in the heart of the Galician countryside. Their intent is to get more and more in touch with nature, growing vegetables and rehabilitating abandoned houses.

Their presence and their idyllic vision, however, greatly disturb the locals, especially the neighbors. Hostilities will sharpen when the two oppose the construction of a wind farm on a plot of land near their estate, blocking the project. Opened by a simply unforgettable incipit, “As bestas” is a psychological thriller that works by subtraction, playing on a minimalist plot and on a constant and never shouted restlessness, capable of getting under the skin from the first to the last minute of the film.

An unexpected twist

The narration is centered on a double clash: that relating to the presence of people arriving from outside (in which the theme of xenophobia emerges decisively) and that relating to an economic difference and of views on the future. If the French couple wants to fully integrate with the countryside, on the contrary their Galician neighbors would like to take advantage of the wind turbine project to get the money needed to escape from that place. The clash soon turns into a mental and physical threat, which will lead to an unexpected turning point: the last chapter of the film develops a situation that is very difficult to predict and manages to propose ideas of great humanity, linked to the desire for resistance present in the soul, in particular of a character. Winner of 9 Goya awards – including those for best film and best director – “As bestas” is one of the most important visions of this first half of 2023, a product capable of starting from the story of a particular story to suggest universal reflections of very current relevance.

Passengers of the night

Another film to recommend is “Passengers of the Night”, a French feature film, directed by Mikhaël Hers and starring Charlotte Gainsbourg. Set in Paris in the 80s, it tells the story of Elisabeth, recently left by her husband, who finds herself alone to take care of her two teenage children. The woman manages to find work in a nightly radio program: here she meets Talulah, a very lazy young woman who Elisabeth decides to take under her protective wing. It is a film about the second chances that life offers us, “Passengers of the night”, a film that tells how to try to start over after such a shocking abandonment. It is a film of good feelings, which however manages to avoid possible rhetorical traps scattered along the way thanks to an elegant and delicate staging, accompanied by an effective writing of characters well interpreted by the actresses and actors on stage. more than twenty years after Danièle Thompson’s “Christmas Lunch”.