It says much about the sheer slog of making a stop-motion animation that it’s taken this long for Swiss director Claude Barras to follow up 2016’s Oscar-nominated orphanage tragicomedy My Life as a Courgette. But it’s a relief to see that he’s stuck fast to both the tone and aesthetic that made Courgette so wonderfully distinct and memorable.
Once more, Barras populates his quirky handcrafted world with beautifully expressive, wide-eyed clay-sculpted characters who are closer to vivid childhood drawings than boring old photo-realism. And once again, he contrasts this visual approach with an admirable refusal to pander to sentimental, commercial urges in his narrative (this time co-scripted with Catherine Paillé), which bares the bruises – both emotional and physical – of real, difficult, messy life. Although, admittedly, there are rather more cute animals in this one.
Where Courgette was located on Barras’s snowy home turf, Savages transports us to the thick tropical jungles of Borneo, which, in his charming depiction, really do feel lush and teeming with precious fauna. Here we meet Kéria (voiced by Babette De Coster), a schoolgirl with indigenous Penan heritage on her dead mother’s side, who lives on the fringe of a palm oil plantation with her father (Benoît Poelvoorde). After witnessing the shooting of a female orangutan by loggers, she adopts its young, teat-craving offspring. The pair then embark on a jungle adventure with Kéria’s young Penan cousin Selaï (Martin Verset), who’s handy with a blowpipe.
Here’s a family film that puts character before plot and pop-culture references
What follows is less of an epic journey than a verdant family drama. Kéria connects with her Penan grandparents and learns to appreciate their nomadic traditions more than her smartphone. There is also an environmental message, which is too thickly applied at times. Although given the injustices the story encapsulates, from the bureaucratic traps laid for the indigenous folk to straight-up murder, it’s hard to begrudge the indignation.
Those more comfortable with the easy beats of Hollywood family animation may find Barras’s storytelling unevenly paced, and wonder why there’s so much sitting around and chatting about stuff when there’s a whole wilderness to tour.
But like Courgette, there’s real value in a family film that puts its characters before plot, gags and pop-culture references, and which explores it with such wit, sincerity and visual panache.
In UK and Ireland Fri Aug 1.