Wild Foxes (Review)
A boxing coming-of-age film that sees a French teenager question the brutality of his trade.
Wild Foxes is in UK/IE cinemas 1st May
How can you make a boxing film that does not feel like a replication of every other boxing film? The answer is in Wild Foxes, Valéry Carnoy's newest film, which stars Samuel Kircher as Camille, a young boxer who attends a sports academy. Camille finds himself narrowly avoiding a fatal accident, due to the efforts of a classmate, but finds himself injured. He recovers rapidly to the disbelief of his classmate, until he experiences a pain that creeps in, threatening his big dreams.
We often see boxing films about men a lot older than Camille, who are facing conflicts, seeking redemption, or attempting to get through a big fight. Wild Foxes stands apart from other boxing films because it provides a teenager who does not have the ability or emotional intelligence to navigate the implications of his injury and the pain he experiences, and how it changes the world he lives in. An elite sports boarding school is the perfect setting, demanding an environment that stokes a toxicity towards sports, one that demands resisting pain at all costs and making him into an outcast.
Camille is young, full of bravado, and extremely exceptional at boxing, and for that to be taken away from him, throws him at a time when he does not have the tools to deal with the pain. As his pain is unexplained and a doctor remarks to him, it is not medically possible for him to feel like this, he begins to face the anger and wrath from his fellow boxers, who are furious that they're carrying his dead weight.
His instructor remarks that pain can be transcended and people persevere speaks to the general attitudes Camille faces from his fellow students and staff. Camille's relationship with his sparring partner and best friend, Matteo, undergoes a transformation with this accident. They are 'bros'. At the very start, we see them making TikTok videos together and huddling together after a match. But with Camille's inability to be the boxer he once was, as fellow students turn against him, so does Matteo. Matteo cannot understand why Camille is unable to box as he once did, and Camille is hurt by Matteo aligning himself with the other students and, therefore, aligning himself against him.
Samuel Kircher is perfectly cast as Camille and masterfully executes that transition from cocky and extremely talented teenager to one who is grappling with pain, which everyone doubts. There's an underlying anger he feels towards his situation, and it manifests when confronted by situations in which his pain and ability as a boxer are questioned. The ability to convey such complex emotions makes the film interesting and gripping, because we know so much about Camille without it being spoon-fed to us.
When faced with sparring in the ring, he fakes a certificate from a doctor, feigning tendinitis. Wild Foxes has a lot to say about pain - how we perceive it and its impacts on us. When pain has a cause and a condition attached to it, we can relate to and understand and have sympathy for it. But with Camille's pain being psychological, nobody affords him sympathy once his scans are clear. In a conversation with a young taekwondo player, Yas, where they compare scars, it's clear that they're treated like trophies and a marker. Something to be proud of.
Valéry Carnoy's direction is restrained enough to create a film that does not provide easy resolutions and encapsulates the uneasy years where we come of age, and the world feels within our reach, but social politics and hierarchy become mechanisms to consider. Add in an elite institution and a sport which has a long history of causing its participants pain beyond belief, Wild Foxes is not only a boxing coming-of-age film, it is one that is deliberate its portrayal of pain and how elite institutions spur on a toxicity amongst its students and how it violently manifests.
Buy us a London-priced coffee, and fuel our work - for £5 a month you can help us keep OBSCURAE’S independence alive.
