Bestiaire

Bestiaire

Fascinating and beguiling, Bestiaire is filmmaker Denis Côté's (Curling) mesmerizing meditation on the relationships between animals and people through the seasons at a Quebec safari park. This strikingly gorgeous work about the act of looking slyly blurs the line between observer and observed (the film opens with art students sketching taxidermied creatures). And despite lack of a traditional narrative, there is dramatic tension in each exquisitely framed shot: a cage door under attack from a growling lion; the scurrying striped legs of zebras in a pen; the long stare of a bull, straight into camera. Contemplative and enthralling, Bestiaire is cinema at its purest.