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‘Savages’ Review: Environmentalist Stop-Motion Gem Is a Potent Political Statement With Young Audiences in Mind
'Savages,' a new stop-motion gem from 'My Life as a Zucchini' director Claude Barras, tells the story of two children saving a forest.
Now, the passing of a different maternal figure at the hands of unscrupulous men ignites the filmmaker’s eco-conscious, anti-colonial follow-up “ Savages.” When a female orangutan is killed by loggers on the Indonesian island of Borneo, 11-year-old Kéria (Babette De Coster) and her father Mutang (Benoît Poelvoorde) adopt her adorable offspring and name it Oshi. Yet, even if departing from a rather obvious, if timely, environmentalist premise, Barras and co-screenwriter Catherine Paillé — with Nancy Huston and Morgan Navarro credited as collaborators in the film’s development — mold a potently stirring and hopefully galvanizing cry against not only deforestation, but all manner of transgressions that jeopardize our collective future on this planet. The tactile aesthetic of “Savages” truly comes across as handcrafted, even more so than similarly conceived projects like the recent, more polished “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.” The environments in Barras’ latest, however, seem more intricate than in “Zucchini,” this time populated with varied vegetation, waterfalls, rock formations and multiple animal characters that accompany the kids on their journey.
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