Savages review – a deeply political film designed to raise awareness of Indigenous rights

When you see a stop-motion character in a hard hat operating construction equipment, it’s hard not to think of Bob the Builder. But in Savages, a sparky adventure about a young city girl getting lost in the Borneo jungle, the guys in bright yellow diggers are definitely the baddies. They represent mechanised progress steamrollering tradition just to maximise shareholder value.

Despite its charming visual style, fish-out-of-water premise and fun gags, such as an incongruous mobile phone ringtone, Savages is a deeply political film designed to raise awareness of an ongoing situation regarding Indigenous rights. Irreplaceable rainforest is being razed to make way for profit-generating palm oil plantations. The question is: can we fix it?

Swiss director Claude Barras has previous when it comes to making movies for children that don’t sugar-
coat the harshness of real life. His first full-length animation My Life as a Courgette, co-written with acclaimed French film-maker Céline Sciamma, was set in a social care home full of orphans who’d been traumatised in various plausible ways. Despite the unvarnished subject matter – at the time, Barras described his approach as “Ken Loach for kids” – the film was Oscar-nominated for Best Animated Feature in 2017.

It’s taken a while for Barras to complete his follow-up (when your métier is the painstaking art of stop-motion animation, you can’t really rush things) but Savages has been worth the wait. It retains the distinctive aesthetic of My Life as a Courgette – the characters have oversized heads like Funko Pop! figures but with huge expressive eyes and a weathered, lived-in look – and broadens its scope to explore the wonders and dangers of a tropical wilderness.

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Our hero Kéria is a young Swiss girl who has been dragged back to Borneo by her father Mutang. He works for the blandly named and casually rapacious Green Forest Company and has the logo-branded bumbag to prove it. Kéria’s late mother was from the local Indigenous community but her daughter seems totally disconnected from that side of her heritage. She does, however, form a bond with a baby orangutan who is cruelly orphaned by overeager loggers. “We both lost our moms,” she whispers to the creature, whom she cutely christens Oshi after the sound he makes while sneezing.

With the locals actively protesting against government-sanctioned deforestation, Kéria’s maternal grandfather drops off her young cousin Selaï at Mutang’s compound to keep him away from the front lines. Kéria resents this intrusion on her personal space, particularly as Oshi seems to have a rapport with the young barefoot boy. But all Selaï wants to do is get back to his nomadic family in the jungle. When he runs away with Oshi in tow, Kéria sets out in pursuit.

At first things go terribly as the mismatched trio struggle to overcome various natural hazards, from sudden downpours to poisonous snakes. But among the lush vines and untamed undergrowth Kéria slowly begins to get back in touch with her roots. Before long she is ready to take militant steps against the logging company, who are using a combination of legal wrangling – they refuse to recognise protests by nomads because they lack official government IDs – and sheer overwhelming force to try and impose their will.

It’s fair to say that Savages gets pretty earthy: one Indigenous elder demonstrates her contempt for a glibly offered bribe by promptly squatting and taking a leak on the stack of banknotes. But Kéria and Selaï soon learn that as well as bravado it takes grit, self-knowledge and a little ingenuity to mount an effective defence. Even then it’s far from easy. “Progress stops for no one!” exclaims one of the developers: part blanket statement, part threat.

There is enough fun monkey business that kids can enjoy Savages without needing to grasp all of its political points. To lower the language and subtitle barrier for younger viewers, the UK release is two-pronged, with both the original French and an English dub in circulation. It helps that it looks so visually arresting, with every frame crammed with character. You can’t really miss when you’ve got a mischievous baby orangutan on the team. 

But the themes of ecological damage and injustice are so integral to the story that whatever your age, you are likely to come away from the film with a burning sense that something needs to be done. You don’t get that in Smurfs.

Savages is in cinemas from 1 August.

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