“Too Many Beasts”, an interview with director Sarah Arnold

Sarah Arnold’s debut feature, “Too Many Beasts”, set in a countryside teeming with wild boars, angry hunters and local authorities catering for their own needs, is a biting, surprisingly funny and rather exhilarating thriller revolving around a local police investigation on a gruesome murder, presented at the Directors’ Fortnight of the 79th Cannes Film Festival. The film features finely tuned, witty dialogues recited by a top-shelf ensemble led by a priceless Alexis Manenti as the initially taciturn and heartbroken but sharply observant Corsican newcomer at the police station, and the unfailingly badass Ella Rumpf as a police psychologist with whom he has to have regular meetings and immediately reassures him, when he asks if he shouldn’t talk to a make therapist, by saying, ‘don’t worry, I’m just as incompetent as a man.’

“Too Many Beasts” was awarded the Europa Cinemas Label.

About the setup, the French director says she thought it was ‘a great way to talk about class conflict,’ and said she was trying to play with the codes of the kind of film men would make, especially American men – citing “Fargo”, “Inherent Vice” and “True Detective” as references –, and give them an absurd slant, seeing as she is a woman making a film in a specific area of a much smaller country.

Sarah Arnold tells us more about the character of Fulda, and explains why she wanted to meld the therapy element with the investigation. She also underlines the unpredictability of the situation and talks about the fact that many characters here are in fact quite ill-adapted within this society.

On subverting gender-related stereotypes within a traditionally male context, Sarah Arnold says she wanted to make it difficult, for the viewer, ‘to identify exactly who each of these people is, where the desire is,’ pointing out that if you blur things for the viewer, ‘if they don’t know what to expect, then you can be free.’

On the fact that her quirky characters – and the subverted gender stereotypes – represent a form of rebellion against the set order, Sarah Arnold mentions, ‘This is what we wanted to feel, while we were working on this project: that there is a possibility of staying free and that we have to stand, all together… I’m not an activist, but I have a lot of respect for these people, who dedicate their lives to fighting. I made this film so as not to forget that we have to disobey.‘

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