Avis des critiques

With a breezy 70 minute runtime, “Fauna” is a delightful puzzle of a film. Even as it leans heavily into its metafictional conceits, laying bare just how much of its second half, for instance, is pure fantasy (or is it?), Pereda’s actors find ways of unearthing emotionally wrenching moments.

Pereda’s film never finds a cohesion of thesis and style. It has charming moments and a few laughs, but it is delivered in such an overly blunted manner that nothing sticks as memorable.

[A] succinctly effective farce... With understated finesse, "Fauna" observes how our personalities mutate depending on which facet of our lives we are facing, what we want to project, who we want to manipulate, and how we want to be perceived. We take on whatever character works best for the occasion, not unlike animals adapting to fluctuating conditions.

At 70 minutes, “Fauna” is over as soon as it begins. Its critiques on the cultural obsession with violent content, and how fiction can bleed into reality for the most vulnerable target, are fleeting but deliver in their modest doses... “Fauna” is an aggressively strange oddity, but Pereda is an accomplished enough director to drive it home. Wherever that is.

"Fauna" has some smart things to say about how the drug trade and its attendant stereotypes have changed the Mexican popular imagination. You just have to pay attention to follow the film’s many idiosyncratic twists and turns.

While “Fauna” works best as a slice of life... the genre bender’s second half welcomes an intriguing dissection of how crime stories worm into our imaginations... With its beautiful wide shots of small-town Mexico, Pereda’s “Fauna” cunningly mixes witty comedy with neo-noir suspense for a smart angle on the country’s ongoing drug war.

Lyrical, haunting and at times extraordinarily funny, "Fauna" is a work best viewed twice, and with the clear understanding that even one revisit may not be enough. But also know the task isn’t insurmountable, thanks to a breezy 70-minute run-time.

Despite the undercurrents of dysfunction, "Fauna" is a resolutely sly and humorous film, especially in these introductory scenes where the chemistry between the actors—all veterans of Pereda’s cinema—is free to spark in moments of both casual conversation and unspoken discomfort.