Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma show promisingly grim tendencies in a supremely confident horror that lacks a bit of thematic bite
Teddy. The name is all wrong for the teenager at the centre of this French arthouse horror: a shaven-headed heavy metaller. Teddy is not cuddly nor particularly lovable, but he does turn furry by the light of the full
moon. He’s a werewolf, though young film-making brothers Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma are too classy – and sensible – to reveal much more than a flash of bony wolf-foot when Teddy transforms.
The film is in fact a supremely confident genre dice and splice from the Boukhermas: a social realist body-horror black
comedy with elements of coming-of-age drama. It reminded me a bit of Julia Ducournau’s cannibal movie Raw, but I’m not sure it’s got quite as much to say. Anthony Bajon is electrifying as Teddy, a high school dropout from a poor family. He lives with his disabled aunt and heavy-drinking uncle (Ludovic Torrent); “We’re the village idiots,” says Teddy. Knowing what everyone in town thinks of his family, Teddy petulantly acts up to the part of mindless yob. He is also the world’s worst temp at massage parlour Ghislaine’s Nimble Fingers, where owner Ghislaine (Noémie Lvovsky) is a lazily predictable stereotype of the gagging-for-it middle-aged woman.