STRUGGLE FOR LIFE / La Loi de la jungle

West Coast Premiere • Comedy • France, 2016

DCP • 1.85 • Dolby 5.1 • Color • 100 min

Directed by: Antonin Peretjatko

Written by: Antonin Peretjatko, Frédéric Ciriez, Maud Ameline

Cinematography: Simon Roca

Film Editing: Antonin Peretjatko, Xavier Sirven

Produced by: Alice Girard (Rectangle Productions), Scope Pictures, France 3 Cinéma, Orange Studio

Cast: Vincent Macaigne (Marc Châtaigne), Vimala Pons (Tarzan), Pascal Légitimus (Duplex), Mathieu Amalric (Galgaric), Fred Tousch (Friquelin), Rodolphe Pauly (Damien), Jean-Luc Bideau (Rosio) 

International Sales: Be For Films

 

Comic auteur Antonin Peretjatko takes his signature blend of absurdity and lyricism to the next level in this inventive satire inspired by globalization run amok. Snakes and tarantulas beware, there’s a true beast afoot in the jungle.  “Guyaneige,” the first tropical indoor ski resort, is under construction in Guyana. Marc, a by-the-book trainee from the French Ministry of Standards, is dispatched to ensure that the building is up to code. Marc’s driver is an attractive young intern from the National Forestry Service who goes by the name of Tarzan, of course. On the way to the site, well, let’s just say mistakes are made, and the hapless pair find themselves getting back to nature, tropical rainforest style. As Marc and Tarzan encounter religious sects and mercenaries, sleep on tree branches above the forest canopy, dine on larvae, and ingest powerful aphrodisiacs, the spark of romance seems inevitable. Mathieu Almaric takes a screwball spin as a cigar-puffing neo-colonialist rogue.

 

For his second feature writer/director Antonin Peretjatko wanted to work again with actors Vimala Pons and Vincent Macaigne, whose stock has gone up since their star-making appearances in his first film La fille du 14 juillet. That film, which premiered at the 2013 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and was nominated for a Best First Feature César in 2014, was noted for its playful echoes of early 60s Nouvelle Vague films. In Struggle for Life, Peretjatko reaffirms this affinity with a sensibility not far removed from the more comic moments of Godard’s Pierrot le Fou. A graduate of the Louis Lumière School, Peretjatko has made a handful of short and medium length films, as well as the making-of for Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet and Rust and Bone. The germ for this film came to Peretjatko from the real construction of a bridge between Guyana and Brazil that Brazilians were forbidden to use because it didn’t meet European construction requirements.