Savage State

“The heroine of Savage State falls into the trap of being ‘not like other girls’—a backhanded compliment that stops short of deeper strength.”

Title: Savage State (2019) / French: L'état Sauvage
Director: David Perrault 👨🏼🇫🇷
Writer: David Perrault 👨🏼🇫🇷

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

Technical: 3/5

Read any review of Savage State, and you’ll likely run into this refrain: Slow. Boring. A slog.

I’m not here to refute any of that. David Perrault’s film, which hails from France and saw its North American premiere at Fantasia Festival last week, observes a French family in the 1860s as they flee war-torn America. Theoretically, such a storyline should get the blood pumping. But Savage State adopts the western genre trait of elegiac storytelling and pushes those boundaries to dulling effect. Slo-mo shots, a jumble of unexplored romances, and flat characters all work in tandem to stymie the film’s momentum.

On the plus side, this languidness leaves room for outstanding visuals by cinematographer Christophe Duchange to shine. Seasons visibly pass onscreen, giving the story a lush sensibility as backdrops traverse summery skies to autumnal canopies to feverishly bright snow. While other modern westerns like the Coen brothers’ True Grit (2010) or Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff (2010) opt for dusty sepia and sunset colors, the sheer vividness of Perrault’s film sets itself apart from canon.

Gender: 4.25/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

In addition to arresting views, Savage State’s feminism also marks its uniqueness. Perrault assembles a cast that’s majority women, including its central baddie: a persistent tracker named Bettie (Kate Moran) who leads a group of masked men hellbent on hunting down Victor (Kevin Janssens), the American cowboy tasked with leading a French family to safety.

Bettie could have been a fascinating anti-hero given an iota of backstory. Unfortunately, we’re never clued into why she chases Victor with such wild-eyed fervor, save for a generic sense that he shortchanged her on a deal that went south early in the film. Later, audiences hear lewd insinuations from Bettie to Victor that hint at a past relationship. But in the absence of more explanation, her over-the-top obsession with the frankly average dude feels inexplicable.

Thankfully, the rest of the film generally lives up to its feminist goals. Audiences get to know a family of mostly women. We meet a recalcitrant mother and her husband, their three adult daughters, and the family’s hired servant Layla (Armelle Abibou). Together, women make up the majority of screentime.

The youngest daughter Esther (Alice Isaaz) acts as the film’s primary hero, taciturn and spoiled. Her most redeeming qualities appear during generic moments of competence, such as wowing a male bystander by handling a revolver with ease. But it’s actually in these moments where the male gaze sneaks in. Esther adopts traditionally masculine traits, like overcoming a tough stretch of passage by clambering over a stuck carriage, skirts akimbo. In contrast, her mother and sisters whimperingly squeeze past, requiring men on either side to grasp their hands and pull them to steadier ground. I assume viewers are meant to find the fear exhibited by Esther’s mother and older sisters weak in contrast to our plucky heroine, who time and time again falls into the trap of being “not like other girls”—which is really just a backhanded compliment that stops short of deeper strength.

Luckily, Esther does build relationships with other women within her family and to Layla, assuring a women-centered narrative. Because of this breadth, potential pitfalls like Esther’s predictable romance with Victor don’t actually grate much at all.

Race: 2.75/5

In 1860, almost 1 in 7 Americans were Black, Hispanic, Native, or Asian. Now find me a western that reflects that, and I’ll eat my cowboy hat.

Following genre norms, Savage State inhabits a world filled with white characters. (One Black waiter working in the background of a Southern ball scene does not count as representation.) What does count, however, is the film’s inclusion of Layla—a free Black Frenchwoman—in a key role.

Like most of the characters in Savage State, Layla receives a romantic storyline. This could have gone horribly wrong, since Layla’s love interest doubles as her white employer in pre-abolition America. But Perrault dutifully refrains from depicting anything more than meaningful looks between the pair.

In another tightrope carefully crossed, Layla begins the film as a stereotypical caregiver or “mammy” who dispenses free emotional labor to Esther, comforting the blonde after a nightmare on top of having to cook and clean and wait on Esther’s family. But over the course of their journey, Layla comes into her own and becomes an equal to the white women who surround her. Perrault establishes her power during a pivotal scene: When the weary family hunkers down in an abandoned building for dinner, Layla abstains from serving them food, a task that would have fallen on her shoulders early in the movie. Instead, after months of dangerous journeying have leveled the playing field, she pointedly helps herself and slurps from her bowl, intentions clear. The matriarch, who already has a vendetta against Layla, reluctantly goes up to get her own food.

Layla (left) slurps her soup while the family matriarch (right) stands up to fetch her own dinner

Despite the good mentioned above, however, it’s ultimately wearisome to see Perrault imbue the film’s sole Black speaking role with mystical qualities through the way she tells a fable to Esther or sticks needles into a voodoo doll—the latter of which no followers of West African vodun actually do. A mythbuster adds that the depictions of voodoo dolls “primarily exist as a way of exploiting and commercializing ... the virulent misconception that voodoo is all about hexes and curses.” Savage State does nothing to combat that false narrative and in fact leans heavily into this negative stereotype.

Bonus for LGBTQ: +0.25

Midway through the film, as Esther and her older sister Justine (Déborah François) pause to take a break from the trail, Justine describes how she fell in love with a distant cousin of theirs who happened to be a woman. Rather than overreact, Esther pauses to register the information and absorbs it neutrally. Then the two continue their conversation about love overall. With this deft maneuver, Savage State successfully normalizes queer love without feeling out of place nor overly optimistic for a period story.

Mediaversity Grade: C+ 3.42/5

Savage State adds a new voice to the western canon, refreshing with its French and feminist perspective. Perrault does make some strategic mistakes, such as eschewing character development in favor of artful flights of fancy, like an occultish dance around a campfire that will make you weep for how much better Céline Sciamma did it in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019). But if you’re okay with trading story for a solely sensory experience, then Savage State makes for an affecting mood piece.

Like Savage State? Try these other American Civil War-era titles.

LiSeptember 5, 2020