‘Too Many Beasts’ review: Alexis Manenti and Ella Rumpf anchor a genre-bending French crime story

Dir: Sarah Arnold. France. 2026. 95 mins

Trouble arrives on four legs in rural France as farmers and hunters lock horns over the increasing presence of wild boars. They are fattened through manual feeding in woodland for hunting but stray beyond, ruining crops. It’s a clash that ends in violence and the disappearance of farmer Raoul Brun (played with threatening intensity by Jean-Louis Coulloc’h) in the pacy prologue of writer/director Sarah Arnold’s enjoyable, if tonally idiosyncratic, crime romp. 

Arnold captures the petty bureaucracy and corruption that can exist in a small town, but avoids being judgemental 

Those expecting this gripping opening to mark the start of a hard-boiled drama may be disappointed as the first-time feature director and her team of co-writers (Jérémie Dubois, Olivier Seror, Romain Winkler and Mehdi Ben Attia) have an altogether different beast in mind and soon begin scrambling the story with increasing amounts of absurdity. That mix, which also dips into pratfall and lower brow waters, may not be for everyone, but adds a distinctive air to Too Many Beasts, which premieres in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. It will be released in France by Pan Distribution and its accessible but unusual plot, plus the presence of known international names Ella Rumpf (Raw, Marguerite’s Theorem) and Alexis Manenti (Les Misérables) should help it get a foothold elsewhere. 

As the action fast-forwards to a year after Brun vanished, cop Fulda Orsini (Manenti) arrives from Corsica to the town of Serieux (Serious) – a nice little off-hand joke – with a predictable amount of personal baggage. His troubled history means he also has orders to check in on a daily basis with shrink Stéphane Danger (Rumpf). Also newly arriveed, she is forced to operate from a broom cupboard by Inspector Marchal (Bertrand Belin). Arnold captures the petty bureaucracy and corruption that can exist in a small town, but avoids being overly judgemental; she also shows the regular townsfolk to be vibrant and welcoming of difference in their own way.

The local annual money-spinning hunt is imminent but someone is on an unauthorised boar-killing spree, dumping the dead animals at the homes of those involved. Paired with Victor Chaton (Vincent Dedienne), Fulda begins to investigate, with strange sightings increasingly suggesting that Brun may not be as dead as previously thought.   

Initially there are only hints of comedy, mainly in Gaelle Usandivaras’ production design in the hunters’ homes, which is a triumph in taxidermy, walls chock-full of trophies. As Fulda’s problems begin to show themselves – not least in heavy drinking – a trippy sort of madness begins to take hold; especially after he and Stéphane pair up to try to nail the case.

Although this is Arnold’s first feature, she has been a regular on the festival circuit with her shorts, including Parades, Locarno Golden Leopard winner Totems and, most recently, Store Policy. The not always smooth tonal manoeuvring in Too Many Beasts gives a sense of more than one film jockeying for position within the same narrative, but both are interesting and held together by the excellent central performances. 

Manenti, who can also be seen at Cannes this year in the Critics’ Week gay trucker will they/won’t they romance Flesh And Fuel, lets unpredictability flicker through Fulda while keeping it sufficiently in check to maintain our sympathy. Rumpf has the harder job on her hands, with the less developed Stéphane, but she comes into her own as a glint of impetuousness starts to show.

The scoring from Florencia Di Concilio, often punctuated by a nervy panting, has a stressed-out quality that helps the tension build, and there are also energetic needle drops from the likes of British breakbeat duo Evil Nine which add to the generally propulsive nature of Arnold’s direction.  While never losing its pace in terms of Arnold’s dynamic shooting style, the story starts to run out of juice in the film’s final act. But with this sort of ambitious approach to what could have been overly familiar material, you can’t accuse her of not going the whole hog.