In The Explosive Species, Sarah Arnold transforms a shaky rural investigation into a radiography of human tensions. Between farmers at their wits’ end, hunters, and officials caught in a dubious game, wild boars become the revealer of a countryside where anger, lies, and solitude threaten to explode.
In The Explosive Species, her first feature film, Sarah Arnold transforms a rural investigation into a sharp observation of human tensions. The wild boars ravage crops, the inhabitants sink into their grievances, and the institutions appear to be riddled with arrangements. In the midst of this bleak countryside, the encounter between two fragile beings brings an unpredictable energy to the narrative.
Presented at the Quinzaine des Cinéastes, the film borrows the appearances of a rural thriller without fully adhering to its rules. A disappearance, a murder, and a stagnated investigation form its framework, but the plot often eludes the expectations of the genre. Sarah Arnold prefers to depict the confusion of a territory where agricultural, political, and hunting interests intertwine, while each camp feeds its own suspicions.
A countryside beset by crisis and conflict
In this French countryside, wild boars are much more than a threat to crops. They crystallize already established power dynamics: for farmers, they embody losses that worsen a precarious financial situation; for some hunters and notables, they also become a source of entertainment or a pretext for maneuvering. The animal thus concentrates social tensions, blurring the line between wild nature and human violence.
The narrative is rooted in the fate of Raoul Brun, a farmer cornered by bankruptcy. After killing a notable, he disappears without a trace, while the case remains unresolved. A year later, the gendarmes still have not managed to untangle facts from rumors, in an atmosphere where private interests seem to weigh as much as the pursuit of truth.
An unstable balance faux thriller
When Fulda arrives in the region, the investigation changes pace without becoming a classic police mechanic. This Corsican gendarme has been transferred after violently assaulting a colleague; he also bears the consequences of a separation and a dependency on alcohol. His presence is disorderly, sometimes disconcerting, but his intuition retains remarkable sharpness.
Portrayed by Alexis Manenti, Fulda gropes through an environment where accounts contradict each other and distrust has become almost ordinary. The film does not always give its criminal stakes the clarity expected of a thriller. This narrative fragility creates a sense of approximation: the investigation sometimes seems to stall, as if the disorder of the place contaminates the very form of the narrative.
The crisis, meanwhile, never remains abstract. It is reflected in the threatened harvests, in the anger of the operators, and in the way some officials seem to protect their alliances rather than the residents. The landscape becomes an extension of the collective malaise: the woods swallow light, fields bear the marks of conflicts, and silences render every conversation suspicious.
Fulda and Stéphane, two solitudes in the face of chaos
Stéphane, a psychologist played by Ella Rumpf, joins the barracks to support struggling gendarmes, particularly Fulda. Yet, she too appears deeply shaken. Relegated to a technical room to meet with brigade members, she tries to listen in a setting that offers her little space.
Her apparent assurance masks a vulnerability close to that of the people she accompanies. She seeks to understand others without having simple answers herself. This position gives the character a unique presence: Stéphane is neither a perfectly composed external observer nor a therapist able to heal wounds on demand.
Between her and Fulda, complicity does not build on reassuring progression. A sequence of MDMA use tilts their relationship into a physical and comedic experience, where their references blur and their minds seem to converge. In this agitation, the scene disrupts the heavy routine of the investigation and reveals a form of unexpected understanding.
Their closeness then composes a duo of improvised vigilantes, isolated amid lies and rivalries. Yet they do not become flawless heroes: their flaws remain visible, their gestures hesitant, and their bond profoundly accidental. The film finds a singular grace here, allowing two battered beings to recognize something in each other without erasing their contradictions.
A chaotic love in the darkness of the woods
The relationship between Fulda and Stéphane takes shape in a universe that seems to offer neither stability nor promise of healing. It advances through jolts, impulses, and unexpected closeness, far from carefully prepared idylls. Sarah Arnold leaves part of absurdity and discomfort in this story, as if attachment arose precisely from that which escapes control.
This approach can be unsettling, just like the changing tone of the film. The atmosphere remains grim, but humor emerges in the heart of grotesque situations; violence coexists with awkward tenderness. These contrasts do not always dissipate the irregularities of the thriller, but they give it a less predictable texture and an unconventional freedom of tone.
The last movement of the narrative extends this logic in an intimate, awkward, and fragile scene. Handcuffed, Fulda and Stéphane seem both prisoners of their past existence and in the process of breaking free from it. Their closeness does not resolve their wounds; rather, it sketches a breach, a moment where pain no longer wholly governs their gestures.
This way of bringing forth a precarious light in a hostile setting can evoke other portraits of raw characters, even if the films follow distinct paths. In this article dedicated to the raw and intense universe of Naked by Mike Leigh, the harshness of the gaze is also attached to existences crossed by unease. In Sarah Arnold’s work, however, the observation of collective disarray mingles with a jagged fantasy, where tenderness appears amid an investigation that has never stopped losing its references.
In The Explosive Species, Sarah Arnold inscribes human tensions in a rural landscape where the agricultural crisis, political rivalries, and the presence of wild boars compose a shared combustible terrain. The animals ravage crops, but they also become the revealers of a violence that was already smoldering among men. Behind the hunts and rational discourse, contradictory interests, tenacious grievances, and shady arrangements take shape. The countryside is nothing like a peaceful refuge: it resembles a powder keg where everyone seems ready to defend their place, sometimes at the cost of lies or irrationality.
The disappearance of Raoul Brun, a farmer cornered by bankruptcy after killing a notable, gives this fable the contours of a thriller. However, the investigation led by Fulda does not follow the established paths of the genre. An alcoholic, weakened by his personal life and sent far from his island after a professional misstep, the gendarme moves through intuitions and detours. His offset perspective allows him to discern the cracks in a system where brutality hides behind propriety. Facing him, Stéphane, a psychologist isolated in an unwelcoming barracks, tries to listen to men who themselves struggle to comprehend their disarray.
Their meeting brings forth another form of explosion: that of two solitudes that, instead of mending themselves wisely, draw closer in disorder. Arnold films this alliance with a freedom that embraces the contradictions of her characters. A scene under the influence of MDMA transforms their turmoil into a moment of chaotic communion, while humor briefly cuts through the sticky atmosphere. Their bond neither erases the pain nor the awkwardness; it rather opens an unpredictable space, where tenderness can emerge amidst distrust, fear, and collective clamor.
In this universe, “explosive nature” thus refers not only to the overflow of an animal species or the extreme actions of an individual. It permeates power dynamics, exhausted bodies, and poorly contained emotions. In the heart of the dark woods, Fulda and Stéphane still advance without a real handbook, connected by a fragile intuition that neither the investigation nor their past can clarify.
