‘Hunting Daze’ Review: Ricci Gives one of the Year’s Best Performances in Surreal Thriller [Fantasia 2024]
Nahéma Ricci gives another towering lead performance in Annick Blanc’s Hunting Daze, an often surreal thriller that, while terrifically intriguing, loses itself in its second half.
Annick Blanc’s Hunting Daze, which had its Canadian premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival, starts out as a simple drama. It follows Nina (Nahéma Ricci), a sex worker left stranded by her boss in the middle of nowhere and picked up by a group of rowdy boys celebrating a bachelor party. The boys reluctantly want her in their ‘fraternity’ but accept her as part of their group and begin to teach her the ways of nature, including how to call a deer, shoot a hunting rifle, and actively hunt for an animal. After she kills a deer, she’s fully accepted as ‘one of the boys’ and slowly begins to bond with them, even if the group keeps making mean-spirited, often misogynistic jokes towards her.
It doesn’t take long for the movie to take a sharp turn, with the arrival of a (black) newcomer, Doudos (played by Noubi Ndiaye), destabilizing the group’s environment. The (white) men often make subtly racist comments towards him and don’t treat him as an equal member as they do with Nina. Suddenly – and shockingly – an accident occurs, drastically shifting the group’s mood as they are forced to make a difficult choice that slowly consumes them whole. In this event, Nina is the only person of rationality to help the boys decide what’s right.
But the movie then takes a surreal turn as some of the boys begin to experience visions. LP (Alexandre Landry), in particular, thinks Doudos’ presence has blinded him, or rather, he shares part of the guilt of being responsible for the accident that led to his ‘blindness.’ This gets exacerbated through a drug trip in which they experience even more visions that are further spiritually charged than they initially were, with Blanc and editor Amélie Labrèche intercutting many powerful images of nature by deliberately showcasing crucifixes as the one and only form of ‘spiritual’ protection from a nature that begins to show how unforgiving it is towards the actions of its men.
Running at 79 minutes, Blanc deliberately introduces Nina in media res and gives us everything we should know about the protagonist right at the top. She is repeatedly demeaned and sexualized by her boss and is even worse treated by the men who welcome her to LP’s bachelor party. Nonetheless, she sucks it up as she wants to prove herself capable to these horrible people. They begin to accept her once she kills the deer, but even then, their inhumanity is incapable of any form of connection with her.
That’s why she gets locked up in a cage when she is the only person in the group to make a sane decision on what to do in the wake of the aforementioned accident (no spoilers here). The commentary couldn’t be as clear as day. The men would rather carry the guilt of not doing anything, simply because of their innate, racist, misogynist prejudices, than help people in need. It’s a frightening display of toxic masculinity. Blanc (with cinematographer Vincent Gonneville) never hides it away from the audience, directly showing it at the top of the movie and continuing to do so with an array of uncomfortable scenes.
Look at how Blanc always puts Nina in the middle of the group. She’s never not the center of attention, even when Doudos arrives and makes the other men uncomfortable. Don’t believe me? Look at the poster. She is sandwiched between two men on the left and right and can never say or do anything without being judged by them.
As Nina, Nahéma Ricci delivers one of the best performances of the year, and it takes an even bigger feat to make us care for her so much in such a short amount of time. But there couldn’t have been another choice to play her than Ricci, who broke out after starring in Sophie Deraspe’s Antigone in 2019. She imbues Nina with an incredible amount of agency. Even when caught in the middle of these deeply sexist individuals, she always stands up for herself and never does what they want her to do. In the film’s most haunting scene, Nina’s anguish-filled eyes as the only person who deeply cares about everyone’s survival, even if these men don’t seem worth her time, will stay with me for a long time.
It's such a short movie that the impact must be felt by its actors almost immediately. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to attach ourselves to them. Ricci’s performance is filled with so much raw power from the minute she appears on screen that it doesn’t matter how short – or how long – the movie is. We will latch on to her no matter what, and the unspoken expressions she gives to the men are far more powerful and emotionally riveting than any line of dialogue spoken by her or any other protagonist in the picture. With such a towering lead portrayal, Hunting Daze is a lean, but effective thriller that quickly gets under your skin and leaves you with your jaw dropped on the floor, in the face of an inevitable decision that saves the truth from ever coming out, regardless if it’s the morally righteous one or not.
Perhaps it could’ve been longer. Perhaps it could’ve used more development in its spiritual ideas, especially in its midsection, where it’s unclear exactly where Blanc is getting at. But there’s no denying Hunting Daze will arrive with thunderous force in theatres and immediately make an impact long after the Fantasia audience will likely feel massive guilt around meowing at the screen before the movie began, not knowing what was in store for them…