In the life of a cinephile, we often have the opportunity to see extraordinary films that have marked history by their strangeness. We will think in particular of the first films of Jodorowsky or David Lynch. The Wild Boys (selected at the Venice Film Festival) is of this caliber, for our greatest happiness.
Bertrand Mandico is a director of Toulon origin. The man had until today specialized in experimental short films. This time, the filmmaker moves on to feature film, with a wild feature film. The line that best sums up the film? "The most beautiful of all hallucinations." And this is how we can conceive of The Wild Boys : a beautifully hallucinatory film.
The Wild Boys tells the misadventures of a gang of five boys, who after committing a rape on their literature teacher, find themselves in the charge of a sailor and land on a desert island…
One of the particularities of the film is to have a 100% female cast. With in particular the excellent Diane Rouxel, already noticed in the shocking La tête haute by Emmanuelle Bercot. All the rest of the cast is excellent. The five young women stand out in their roles as boys. A casting choice that allows Mandico to explore the relationship to gender. Gender , as sexual identity, is an issue at the very heart of the film. It's a true transgender work. A bit like Julia Ducournau's recent Grave, Les Garçons Sauvages plays with different cinematographic genres. Les Garçons Sauvages is above all an adventure film in the tradition of Treasure Island or the works of Jules Verne. It is also a psychological thriller, a teen-movie, an erotic film… But above all an experimental film.
Aesthetically, the film is magnificent and certainly one of the few French films ever made to have gone so far in its approach. Marrying expressionist blacks and whites, the film refers directly to the magnificence of The Night of the Hunter, with sequences having hypnotic nuances (the vision of an at 4, with colors worthy of an LSD trip will remain imprinted in the retinas of anyone who has seen this film). Script-wise, the film remains very well designed, but unfortunately very cliché. The subtext of the film is that women are naturally softer and more peaceful than men, and therefore they would be safer for the human species to have power. Which is ultimately quite banal and therefore paradoxical for a film, which is absolutely unconventional. The Wild Boys would therefore be a revolutionary and miraculous film in form but much more classic and conventional in substance. A disappointment that remains undermined by the extraordinary experience that is this film.
Finally, a last word to talk about the music, which is heady, fascinating and will leave the audience dreaming in search of emotions.
In conclusion, we can say that The Wild Boys is an unforgettable film. Unforgettable by its mesmerizing visions. By its masterful interpreters. By the elegance and madness of its realization, by the creativity that shines through at every moment… In short, a film to see absolutely, if only to have the proof that the imagination has absolutely no limits.
