When I arrived, we used to drink together and you asked me what I was doing here

Starting my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2023

#50 :  As Bestas (The Beasts)

Middle-class incomers to a remote village in Spain’s ‘wild west’ expose fear, resentment and nationalism in Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s disturbing true-crime drama.

As far as I know this is our first Galician language film - unsurprisingly, I know absolutely nothing about it.  I have concerns it's going to be a bit tense for my liking, but let's see...

The film doesn't rush in to giving you any clue as to what's going to happen - we meet Olga (Marina Foïs) and Antoine (Denis Ménochet) who are a French couple living in Spain and they seem to mostly get on with their lives, but there are initial signs that they doesn't get on with some of the natives.  Particularly their neighbours Xan (Luis Zahera) and Loren (Diego Anido),  and things just get worse as the film progresses - and that's all I'm going to tell you about the story!

It's all very well written and surprisingly tense throughout - much more so than I was expecting (I had to take quite a few breaks from it) and you get a real sense of injustice in places.  However, it's nicely balanced because although one side is obviously wronged, all parties could be more considerate and they're given their moment to explain their point of view and their motivation.  It also has an ending that really keeps you guessing - ten minutes from the end, I had no idea how it was going to be wrapped up (but it does it well).

There are also a surprising number of scenes where the actors are really given the opportunity to open up their acting throttle and let loose - which I wasn't really expecting.  It's very well acted by all the people I've previously mentioned, with Denis in particular giving a really good performance - it's actually the second time we've seen him on here because he's also in Only The Animals (which is a film I very much recommentd) - he's also in Inglorious Basterds, apparently.  I'm also going to mention Marie Colomb who plays Marie, Olga and Antoine's daughter - she's not in it loads, but she's in a couple of very strong scenes with Marina.

It's also well shot - the rural setting is beautiful and really used to full effect, but there are also some very well framed indoor shots.  My only real quibble would be that I didn't need it to be 2:15 long - losing 20-30 minutes would have made absolutely no difference to the plot.  However, it would have made things even tenser, so maybe I should be pleased it gave me some opportunities to relax.

For the first film on the list (which must have had a reasonably small budget) this is an amazingly accomplished offering - I don't imagine too many people will have sought out a Galician language offering, but everyone's missing out on a great film.  If you fancy it, it's available to stream on BFIPlayer and, you might be surprised to hear, available to rent in most of the usual places, so I hope people stumble across it (provided they're able to deal with tension slightly better than I am).

2022 (Guardian) - A year end
2022 (Empire) - Another year end
#49 - Some more plot wouldn't have hurt