Post-SXSW 2020: Rare Beasts Review

For those who didn’t already know, this year’s SXSW was cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak. We at KLM are still here to do our part to help cover films slated to appear at this year’s festival. To keep up with our latest post-SXSW coverage, click here.

On paper, Rare Beasts has an interesting premise, billed as an anti romantic-comedy. Serving as actress Billie Piper’s screenwriting and directorial debut, the film certainly shows her talent behind and in front of the camera (she also stars in the film), however, the final product does not quite work while failing to deliver on all of its ambition. Perhaps being a debut, the script simply tries to do too much, speaking to plenty of major issues, without truly achieving at any (leading to an inconsistent tone and an incoherent story that constantly undercuts itself). Meanwhile, it’s sense of humor, relying on darker subject matter, will definitely not be for everyone. The story and its characters are gratuitously outrageous, bordering on the ridiculous, merely for the sake of it for little to no reason whatsoever. Though that purpose was clearly too push its premise, it will surely be too much for some audiences. Despite all of that, the film manages to still be somewhat compelling to watch in some strange way.

Suffice it to say that Rare Beasts lives or dies on the audience’s ability to get behind its two despicable main characters. It’s kind of unclear why these two people would ever be together but nevertheless, they are what we got. Mandy (Piper) was a wild single mother with an out of control child, working at a production company all the while being stuck in between her separating parents (Thewlis and Kerry Fox) and their complicated relationship while Pete (Bill), a co-worker of Mandy’s, arguably was a misogynist with anger problems. Though their relationship was complicated to say the least with the usual ups and downs, they saw something in one another in a way that could only be described as infatuation. The mostly outrageous dialog keeps things from being fully believable, however, the chemistry between Mandy and Pete somehow keeps the story from falling off the rails.

As mentioned, the best part of Rare Beasts was its performances as Piper and Bill’s chemistry as Mandy and Pete still makes the film somewhat watchable for whatever reason despite the fact that they’re despicable characters who probably should not be together. Piper and Bill certainly did their best with the material and it’s not the actor’s fault it didn’t work.

Though Rare Beasts didn’t quite work, Piper definitely has vision and is still someone to look out for in the future.

*still courtesy of SXSW*

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.