Still A Few Bugs In The System
THE SWARM (La Nuรฉe)- directed by Just Philippot – SPOILERS
Suliane Brahim as Virginie Hรฉbrard
On a farm somewhere in the French countryside, Virginie Hรฉbrard decides to raise locusts as a last ditch effort to survive. She has a mildly asthmatic, soccer-playing son named Gaston (Raphael Romand), and a daughter Laura (Marie Narbonne), who is in high school and is somewhat stigmatized socially for being the daughter of the bug lady. The notion of farming insects for food is a good one (if one must farm animals for food at all). Locusts are a much more efficient source of protein than larger food animals and less land is used in the process of raising them. Alas, her bugs do not lay enough eggs, and she is forced to sell the small quantities of locust flour she produces as feed for the raising of geese and the like.
Gaston adds one of the new, improved blood-fed locusts to his bedroom terrarium
But she has a fortuitous accident while working with her insects. She falls onto some exposed nails and is wounded in the arm. She passes out and when she awakes she finds the locusts are happily devouring her blood. A blood diet (it turns out) is just what the bugs needed and soon Virginie’s business is thriving. Then somehow the local farm bureaucracy can no longer find her license and she can purchase no more animal blood. What is Virginie’s solution? She feeds the creatures her own blood, and the business begins to literally drain her.
High school classmates Luc (Renan Prévot) and Laura (Marie Narbonne)
The situation seems ominous: a concentration of omnivorous locusts being encouraged to breed uncontrollably in the middle of French farmland, but (not to give away too much) the bugs have a fatal flaw that prevents them from ravaging the countryside, and, with some nice foreshadowing, we get some clue to what that flaw might be early in the story.
Director Philippot told Clรฉmentine Dramani Issifou of Semaine de la Critique: “The film tells us that toying with nature yields catastrophic consequences. It’s a universal contemporary fable: producing cheaper, selling in greater quantities, regardless of the sacrifices, regardless of the consequences…I think thatโs why I make films, to tell stories about those who resist.”
Sofian Khammes as Karim, an immigrant who rents land for his vineyard from Virginie, and tries to be a friend to the Hรฉbrards
What began as a green business plan quickly descends into producing feed for more conventional food animals, and when it develops that the bugs themselves are only successful as omnivores, the enterprise quickly ceases to be green. (In fact, there are many successful edible insect producers all over the world but most sell their product for feed, or for pet food. Only a few produce processed bugs for human consumption. See list of “Entopreneurs” around the world.) Insects are often ignored as useful human food. For example, in Patricia Rozema‘s film “Into the Forest” (2015), Elliot Page‘s character kills a wild boar so that her pregnant vegan sister can get the B12 she needs to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. It would have been much simpler (but less dramatic) for her to catch a few crickets.
Marie Narbonne as Laura — Narbonne is also Eugรฉnie Danglars in Alexandre de La Patelliรจre and Matthieu Delaporte’s adaptation of THE COUNT OF MONTE-CHRISTO
Brahim is a pleasure to watch, but please, watch the film in French (with appropriate subtitles if you must). It is much better that way. Be warned that there is extended closeup footage of grasshoppers, but screenwriters Franck Victor and Jรฉrรดme Genevray have penned a lovely, poetic horror story that is worth watching. When THE SWARM premiered at the 2020 Catalan Film Festival, Brahim won Best Actress and the film was nominated for Best Picture.