Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Sophie Hyde, Bonsai Films.
Cast: Holliday Grainger, Alia Shawkat, Fra Fee, Dermot Murphy, Amy Molloy.
Based on the novel by Emma Jane Unsworth, Animals – a hit at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival – has been described as a fierce and unapologetic celebration of female friendship.
This film from director Hyde (52 Tuesdays) is an intimate, funny and bittersweet examination of the challenges of turning talent into action. It is about being a modern woman, with faults, longings and competing desires.
Laura (Grainger, Patrick Melrose, Anna Karenina) and Tyler (Shawkat, Arrested Development, Transparent) are flatmates and best friends, marauding around the streets of Dublin, rejecting the expectations that bombard modern women and acting purely on desire.
They are soulmates, but after a decade of partying, their friendship is strained by Laura’s new love and her focus on her novel. A snapshot of a modern woman with competing desires, at once a celebration of female friendship and an examination of the choices we make when facing a crossroads.
Circumstances change when Laura meets, and then gets engaged, to concert pianist Jim (Fee), who shortly afterwards gives up alcohol. Laura continues her partying lifestyle with Tyler, but starts spending nights with Jim.
Inevitably the dynamics of the various relationships change, and more so after they become friends with a poet, Marty, to whom Laura is attracted, and his circle of literary friends. Laura struggles to make progress with her novel throughout the film. Various events in each of their lives unfold, with questions about life, and especially women’s roles, raised and explored both implicitly and explicitly.
With the development of the women’s friendship front and centre of the film, it doesn’t take the easy route to a typical neat and happily resolved ‘Hollywood ending’, but ends optimistically with Laura finding her creativity beginning to flow as she finds a way forward.
Thanks to Bonsai Films, PS News has a special set of prizes for our readers to see the film at its Australian September release at a cinema near you. In addition to five, free double passes, we also have five, 2-4-1 tickets to see Animals. This means, you buy one ticket and the second is for free!
