![]() Special mention should also be made of the red and blue hues which punctuate the tale and bring to mind the filmmaker’s first loves as a comic book author ( Pinocchio, Best Album award at the prestigious Angoulême International Comic Books Festival) and animated films director (he co-directed Persepolis and Chicken With Plums in league with Marjane Satrapi) a filmmaker who, in this instance, is launching himself gleefully into live-action, revelling in this particular genre form and manhandling and augmenting its codes. The wonderful images offered up by Belgian director of photography Joachim Philippe – images of both the night and the daytime in this cruel, fairy tale forest - plunge the viewer into the story alongside the protagonists, but also alongside the impressive bestiary which haunts the film, highlighting the animality of these human beings who are fighting for their survival. Cruelty, a sarcastic curl of lip, demented laughter… he delivers all this and more, right up to the primal scream, a scream which he shares with Eve in a merciless narrative twist which sees the hunter become the hunted. He takes a hold of this key cinematic figure, the psychopathic killer, inhabiting the role with intensity and facility. Opposite her, as The Man, we find Arieh Worthalter, who changes from a gentleman to a scoundrel with disconcerting ease. A wild child, Eve will fight, empowered by the strength of the trees and the forest. ![]() She decides to live, and not just a little bit. But little by little, surviving is no longer enough for her. She begins by fleeing, powered by her survival instinct. Initially lost in the forest, Eve then finds refuge in it, refuge of both a physical and existential form. But Eve’s doe eyes (those of Lucie Debay) soon give off a worrying look. A post-modern variation on the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, Vincent Paronnaud’s Hunted (screened this week at the Brussels International Film Festival, following its unveiling at the Canadian Fantasia Film Festival, which unspooled online) has the flavour of a cruel and primitive story, the timeless, universal tale of predatory man whose main prey is desperate women. ![]()
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