Valéry Carnoy clearly knows quite a bit about confidence, exuding as much in his ferocious feature debut “Wild Foxes” as a young boxing prodigy (Samuel Kircher) comes to lose. The timing couldn’t be worse for Camille, the teen primed to be a top contender at the upcoming Euro Championships and accepted with hardly any reservation by his fiercely competitive peers at a sports academy in Brussels, and the boy loves them back so much that when an opportunity presents itself to train at a more impressive facility elsewhere more worthy of his talent, he won’t budge, particularly when it would mean leaving behind his closet friend Matteo (Faycal Anaflous). However, a precipitous fall from a day of fooling around in the forest shatters Camille’s right arm, which is quickly bandaged up, but his fractured psyche would seem to take much longer to repair.
From the opening minutes where Carnoy and cameraman Arnaud Guez get right in between Camille and a sparring partner, it’s clear they will never shy away from the fight even as it moves from the ring to inside the young pugilist’s head and the role couldn’t better capitalize on the alternately dangerous and wounded qualities that made Kircher so magnetic in “Last Summer” as Lea Drucker’s underage lover. He is impossible to look away from here as Camille struggles to regain his pre-injury form, showing no signs of lingering physical pain but clearly shaken when it’s no longer in his natural instincts to do things he once did so readily. In a locker room that once pumped each other up with playful insults and demonstrations of masculinity, he now feels attacked when his friends try to tease him and he can barely lift 30kg barbells to the shock of Matteo, who thinks he’s the one joking when he tells him it’s too heavy. It’s no surprise that a lone source of comfort comes from outside of his circle when he takes notice of Yas (Anna Heckel), a taekwondo student who will retreat into the nearby forest to play her trumpet, opening up the possibility of not only a new relationship but the idea his focus should be limited to only one pursuit.
Carnoy brilliantly considers how the people around Camille haven’t changed yet he has profoundly, making their assumptions based on who he once was lead to more pain in unexpected ways. His trainer Bogdan (Jean-Baptiste Durand) refuses to give up on his raw talent even when he can’t make it around one lap of a 10k and a decision to give him one of three covered spots in one of the warm-up events leading up to the Euro Championships fractures the team when it comes at the expense of a berth for Matteo, who can’t match his friend’s physical prowess but is clearly deserving of a shot. When Camille hardly knows what he’s capable of anymore, the anxiety of being pressed into action seems as much of a threat as what could happen if he’s not fully engaged with fists flying at him and as those once closest to him start to turn when their own ambition is on the line, a full recovery seems impossible given how the further he comes along physically, the lonelier he feels.
There’s an uncommon depth to nearly every element of “Wild Foxes,” which takes its title from the animals that are allowed to roam off to the side of the academy that fascinate Camille, who likely sees a kindred spirit in them, but also come to serve a literal plot point when they irritate the surrounding community enough to require a hunt to reduce their number and the students are sequestered to their dorms. As the hunters brought in to kill the wolves fire away, Carnoy leaves Camille as susceptible to catching a stray outdoors as from within where he is no longer welcomed and with each scene and each character given multiple layers, the impact is always impressively spread out beyond any individual moment or who is at the center of the frame at any given time. Involving a sport where reach is such a prized commodity, Carnoy has made a most formidable and compelling drama.
“Wild Foxes” will screen again at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19th at 10:30 pm at Les Arcades.