The Beasts film review — brilliantly written, superbly acted

The rural bar in The Beasts is basic: a few rough tables, one forever occupied by local farmers setting the world to rights. You might well see something precious in that simplicity, here in a remote corner of Galicia, northwestern Spain. So timeless, you might smile. So authentic.

You would guess that was how Antoine (Denis Ménochet) felt on arriving in this dusting of smallholdings in the rich Galician hills. And so the French schoolteacher settled here with his wife Olga (Marina Foïs), starting over by growing organic produce. What lovelier idyll? A day working the soil; supper; sunset.

And yet as the film begins, relations with the men in the bar have soured. That much we glean from the wisecracks as Antoine passes: the mirthless kind.

This excellent, hard-to-shake film turns on how those jibes spiral into war. The antagonists are Xan and Loren (Luis Zahera and Diego Anido), middle-aged brothers either found in the bar or slogging in the scrap of land they share with their elderly mother next door to Antoine and Olga. An ugly campaign of harassment begins. There are small, gross violations; then darker aggressions. And the mood is expertly taut, even if it can feel director Rodrigo Sorogoyen is simply telling with great skill a tale we have seen before.

Not quite. The Beasts is certainly skilful, and filled with deft performances. (Foïs later comes to the fore, but the movie is dominated by Zahera as the type of loudmouth most dangerous when quiet.) But what gives the film its grip is the Why of it all, which is allowed to emerge under the queasy, thriller-ish escalations.

Xan and Loren are crude and cruel but not, in their own minds at least, without reason. The well has been poisoned between the families by a proposed wind farm crossing the area. The brothers were meant to sell up gratefully; their dearest wish to quit the land Antoine adores, and drive a cab in the nearest city, Ourense. But Antoine has vetoed the scheme. Xan demands an explanation. “Because this is my home,” he replies.

The endless complexities inside that simple statement nag through the film: the gulf between the home you choose and the one you’re stuck with. The question of which should take precedence may be mixed up with money and education. It also has no correct answer. And so the knots of logic draw ever tighter around the necks of all parties.

Yes, The Beasts could be read as a fable: an allegory for every newcomer who ever followed a dream into the country. But the film feels hauntingly particular too. It shouldn’t surprise us to learn that it is inspired by real events. (A 2016 documentary, Santoalla, presents those still more plainly.) And so Sorogoyen has made a brilliantly written, superbly acted film with the grave heft of non-fiction: a glimpse of stark truths behind that lush Galician landscape.

★★★★★

In UK cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema from March 24