Sauvagerie

Jonathan Le Fourn and Rémi de Gaalon have come to Brazil to connect with Nature and experience its dream wildness. And here they are, in Bélem, at the edge of the Amazon rainforest, in the State of Pará, that was once famous for its impenetrable tropical forests. But soon they are faced with a different reality: at the opening of the film, a crowd of onlookers is gathering at night around a fresh crime scene. The filmmakers are also curious about the surroundings of the city, so the film turns into a double exploration, alternating between areas of the fabulous nature they were looking for, which has been downsized to a few scattered patches, and a human environment shaped by a territory, as much as it has changed it. On one hand, a suburban wandering marked by figures with telling names: the Philosophical Cop, the FBI Medal-Holder, or the Crime Reporter, for instance. On the other hand, the forest and those who live in it, like the Forest Engineer or the Riverbank Resident. From stories to meetings, from one place to another, links appear. Another mythology takes shape, in which the prevailing wildness is made of homicides, assaults and greed. That gnawing violence, at once diffused and pervasive, gives the film its tempo. Both environments are intertwined, like the story of the young girl, that is so typical of the fantasies about an Eden-like nature. The filmmakers offer us a meandering film filled with paradoxes, as shown by its ambivalent title, a film that forsakes neither fascination nor lucidity, haunted by the surging notes of Dvořák’s famous New World Symphony. (NF)