a review of 豹族

The thing that struck me about this one is how modern it feels, not necessarily in terms of the setting, but in its sensibility and the confidence with which it was made. Torneur deliberately plays with the ambiguity of the central concept, never quite revealing the entire reality of the situation until the final minutes. Even then it's not entirely clear whether the characters are experiencing the same reality that the audience sees, or if it's being heightened somehow. The gender politics are also quite interesting for the time, insofar as the screenplay seems to imply that Irena's mental condition is just damage from internalized patriarchal myth, as symbolized by the image of King John slaying the cat. We see the men in her life (Oliver and the psychiatrist) prey upon her vulnerability and manipulate her emotions, ostensibly to rid her of the "evil", but in reality they are unknowingly helping that myth to fully manifest itself.