Rare Beasts is a formidable directorial debut from national treasure Billie Piper

By Siavash Minoukadeh, Entertainment Sub-Editor

Billie Piper’s directorial debut is billed as an ‘anti-romcom’ which sounds like a simple enough premise. However, Rare Beasts (2019) breaks with genre categorisation so starkly that it’s difficult to claim that this ambitious debut as just a subversion of romcom tropes.

Aside from writing and directing, Piper also plays the romantic lead, Mandy. There’s some similarity between her and your typical romcom protagonist à la Bridget Jones: they both work at a creative company and behave a bit differently from all the other women around them, with quirks that make them stand out. Only it turns out Mandy’s quirks are sniffing lines of coke with her friends over cigarettes and wine, something that you can hardly dismiss as a charming idiosyncrasy.

Leo Bill plays alongside Piper as Pete, who in a romcom would be your ever-so-slightly arrogant, but ultimately charming, man. Given that this is not your typical romcom, it’s hardly surprising that Pete’s arrogance is so all-encompassing that its turns into outright bigotry and misogyny.

Bill’s performance subtly brings out the worst in his character. Lines about how women are becoming too powerful and men should be ‘heroes’ instead of ‘nice guys’ are delivered with such a disarmingly everyday nonchalance. We are used to hearing such backwards ideas from anonymous online trolls who rave about Joker (2019) but seeing a well-dressed, seemingly respectable person espouse them in the flesh is far more disturbing.

Rare Beasts is not happy to simply turn the tropes of romcoms upside down and this is what makes it stand out, for better or for worse

Even the unruly child, often used in romcoms to show off a character’s softer side - think of Jude Law’s daughters in The Holiday (2006) - is here a force for chaos. Mandy’s son Larch - played brilliantly by Toby Woolf - is a stormy force in the plot, disrupting and embarrassing the would-be couple at every turn.

However, Rare Beasts is not happy to simply turn the tropes of romcoms upside down and this is what makes it stand out, for better or for worse. After all, the anti-romcom genre is by now almost as well established as the romcom itself, from Chasing Amy (1997) to The Break-up (2006). Piper strays out further for her directorial debut, attacking not only the romcom as a genre, but the society which supports it.

In many ways, the film I found myself comparing Rare Beasts to the most was 2017’s The Square. Despite having very little in common on paper - The Square is a Swedish satire about the world of contemporary art - both films operate by taking aspects of our society and heightening them to a point where they seem absurd. By doing so, they serve as sharp critiques of the world we live in.

Rare Beasts does suffer from the fact that it tries to do too much in a style which is too original

Rare Beasts examines all kinds of social factors including class - it’s refreshing to see a romance film feature characters who aren’t upper middle class for once - but it reserves the strongest of its anger for masculinity.

Mandy faces the very worst of men from her father, who in her words has ‘broken’ her, and Pete who she now finds herself attracted to, despite the fact that he can’t muster up a shred of respect for her. The film would seem to be making the case that toxic men have made it in the world because other toxic men before them have worn everyone who would have resisted them down.

Piper’s attempt to bring out the social commentary often plays out in the direction as much as in the writing. An absurd wedding scene breaks our expectations with an out-of-place techno beat and at multiple points in the film, characters’ internal monologues blend with the dialogue, making a deliberately confusing mess of thought.

Although these slightly surreal moments of directorial originality make the film stand out from its peers, it also leads to the ideas expressed in it become a bit too diluted. Whilst there’s a lot of good points made and some interesting ways of communicating them cinematically, Rare Beasts does suffer from the fact that it tries to do too much in a style which is too original.

Ultimately though, the film has a strong core, with a clear premise and solid performances. Although the social commentary and moments of experimental direction are of varying success, Rare Beasts does still raise a lot of questions - always a good sign - and is a very convincing debut from Piper behind the camera.

Featured: IMDb / Western Edge Pictures

Is this bold 'triple-threat' directorial debut the start of a solid trajectory, or a little over-ambitious?