A chance encounter with a wolf proves to be inexorably life-changing for the lonely young woman at the heart of this striking German drama, which takes the idea of getting back to nature to an irrational extreme.
A movie that treads into taboo territory that would have tamer films running away with tails between their legs.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2016
Wild 2016
Girl meets wolf in a startling and audacious fable from German actress-turned-director Nicolette Krebitz that is sure to provoke heated debate. Ania (an extraordinary Lilith Stagenberg) is a 20-something office drone with a creep for a boss. Outside the office, her only social interaction involves Skyping her uninterested sister and visiting her comatose grandfather in hospital. One day when walking alongside a wooded area near her apartment she locks eyes with a feral grey wolf. Without giving too much away, her encounter sparks an animalistic primitivism within her that quickly turns into an obsessive desire to hunt down and conquer the savage beast. — MM
“A walk on the wild side in the most literal sense, Wild is a wayward, confrontational, anarchic, sexually outré modern fairy tale that balances on a razor-sharp edge between the genuinely provocative and the totally out-there… Krebitz exhibits real nerve and rigorous control in equal measure as she tells a visceral tale of a young urban woman drawn to nature in a way that will shock mere tree-huggers… The one safe thing to say about the film is that there never has been anything quite like it.
Stangenberg has that exceptional quality that a few actresses exhibit from time to time… specifically, great guts and daring, and not becoming self-conscious or histrionic while laying everything on the line physically. Hollywood actors who imagine they’re bold when they step out of their comfort zones would be humbled and chastened by what they see here.” — Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter