"Oh, it's another of those 'intersecting lives' movies", you could easily say about this movie. And yes it is, in the early stages charting lives so disparate and mutually exclusive that I began to wonder whether my streaming stick had jumped channels, as they are wont to do. But no, stick with it, pay attention to all the details and you will find not a single one of them is forgotten, not a single loose end is left untied, and the whole fascinating jumble coalesces into an amazingly coherent study of human frailty and delusion that will leave you laughing darkly - as it does its biggest victim, who travels halfway across the world not to seek retribution, but simply to understand why all this torment has been visited upon him. Beautifully acted, superbly photographed, with the cultures in France and Africa vividly and sympathetically evoked, this is the cleverest film I've seen in years and certainly one of the most haunting.
Review of Only the Animals
