A teenage girl's burgeoning sexuality coincides with the awakening of an inherited curse.
Shy sixteen-year-old Marie (Sonia Suhl) lives in a bleak Danish fishing village and works filleting flounder in a fish processing factory, when not taking care of her wheelchair-bound catatonic mother. Marie has begun exhibiting rashes and patches of coarse hair in unwanted places, so she seeks treatment from the doctor who also treats her mother for the same unnamed genetic illness. Though allowed to live among them, Marie's family is ostracized by the rest of the community, thanks to there having been issues with her mother before the mother became catatonic, and it's readily apparent that Marie is headed down the same path as her mom. Nothing is ever explicitly stated and the narrative lets the audience figure it out, but it's clear that what's going on here is a lineage of lycanthropy, and the locals are willing to do whatever needs to be done to prevent the possible threat of a werewolf in their midst. It is alluded to that some Russian fishermen "did something" to Marie's mother that rendered her a helpless invalid, and as Marie finds first love with a young co-worker (Jakob Oftebro), her awakening womanhood coincides with more hair growth, increasingly erratic and self-destructive behaviors, and the sprouting of sharp claws, so it's only a matter of time before the villagers take lethal action.
The rigors of lycanthropic feminine puberty.
WHEN ANIMALS DREAM is a Danish production that bears the glacial pacing of a lot of Nordic cinema, so it is the slowest of slow burns. It's well-made, it looks great (or as great as so bleak a setting can look), has realistic performances, and a pervasive bleak and depressing atmosphere, but I have to be honest and admit that I found it a boring slog to get through. I'm apparently in the minority with that opinion, as the film is generally well-regarded, but I'm a werewolf guy who prefers his lycanthropic entertainment to be as savage and visceral as a lupine shapeshifter can get, and WHEN ANIMALS DREAM features zero action, gore, or even a neat werewolf suit or animatronic. What we do see of Marie during the throes of transformation are the most subtle of glimpses, and she remains fully clothed during the climactic wolfing-out.
The concept of lycanthropy as a metaphor for female
puberty/coming-of-age is nothing new and it was handled to far greater
effect in 2000's classic GINGER SNAPS. I got everything I needed and
more from that one, while I found WHEN ANIMALS DREAM to be a plodding
trudge that didn't really amount to anything. It's an arthouse werewolf
movie, though thankfully unpretentious, so it simply was not for me.
Which is not to say that it's a bad movie. Your mileage may vary, but
don't be surprised if you nod off.
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