VFF '11 Le Poil de la Bête and Being Defanged: A Movie Review

Director: Philippe Gagnon.

Writers: Pierre Daudelin, Stéphane J. Bureau.

Set in 1665 New France, Le Poil de la Bête is one of those period pieces that tries to be something more than it is. There seems to be a love for the werewolf amongst international audiences even though this lycanthrope has no cultural heritage of its own (stories about shape-changing beasts can be found all around the globe).

The Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) comes to mind as a better film bearing somewhat similar motifs, and this movie succeeds in where Le Poil de la Bête fails. It's more focused in what matters—in establishing a pathos of the era that sets the tone for the entire movie.

Here, one can find a werewolf story with some comedy, allegory and commentary all mixed in. It takes a shot at aristocracy by showing that even they are not without their secrets. And the hero Joseph Côté (Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge) is not without his faults either.

He's more of a scoundrel than a thief. That nicely sets him up as the outsider as he stumbles his way through the film. Côté is consistently compared to a more famous Père Brindamour, a werewolf hunter, and when he gets blamed for possibly being a shape-changer himself, he tries to convince the people working in the estate of Beaufort that he's perfectly normal.

Instead, he's a coward and Lemay-Thivierge barely plays that part out. But when two irresistible ladies, Marie and Sophie Labotte (Viviane Audet and Mirianne Brulé), start sharing part of the stage, what happens next is atypical for the adventure genre.

The two girls are there to soothe the savage beast, but which one? Who survives remains to be seen. But with their sporadic appearances, this film loses itself in its identity and the subplot drags itself out.

If only the creature effects were better, or the tale included the indigenous tribes version of the fabled beast instead of the European one, then there might be something more to enjoy.

Have a look at some of these other werewolf themed films:



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