This film was seen as part of the Audi Dublin International Film Festival 2016.
Mammal is a psychosexual exploration of grief with a strong sense of direction and two strong central performances, albeit one that manages the rare feat of feeling both sensationalism and lifeless in the same instant.
Writer and director Rebecca Daly has a strong sense of tone, creating a palpable uncertainty and anxiety that pervades the first half of the film. Daly crafts an engaging sense of ambiguity, allowing tensions and uncertainties to simmer beneath the surface of the relationship between her two central characters. The performances help a great deal, with Rachel Griffiths doing great work as the divorced and isolated Margaret and Barry Keoghan offering strong support as the mysterious Joe. Mammal is filled with awkward silences and tense foreboding.
Unfortunately, all of those tension and anxiety has to build to something, and Mammal suffers in how it decides to deliver upon and follow through on all that suspense and ambiguity. Mammal really struggles during its second act, offering twists that should be shocking but are ultimately entirely predictable. Mammal seems to try to escalate in its final act, but the film suffers quite a bit from its own efficiency at setting the mood. In its last forty minutes, the film is left nowhere to go but the most expected directions, the blows softened by the fact they’ve been awkwardly signposted.
Mammal works best when it focuses on the interiority of its characters, but struggles when it asks them to act upon one another.
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