Film Review: Wolf is a distressing tale of conversion therapy
Wolf: a powerful fable of intolerance and self-acceptance
★★★★☆
(15A) opens with teenager Jacob (George Mackay) being committed to an institution run by Dr Mann (Paddy Considine), who promises to cure Jacob of the Species Identity Disorder that has caused Jacob to act like a wolf.
Surrounded by like-minded sufferers — teens who believe themselves, or wish to be, pandas, spiders, parrots and German shepherds — Jacob struggles to suppress his instincts. But when he meets ‘Wildcat’ (Lily-Rose Depp), Jacob realises that his so-called ‘projection’ of a wolf persona is who he truly is, at which point the previously helpful Dr Mann — aka ‘The Zookeeper’ — begins to reveal his true colours...
Written and directed by Natalie Biancheri, nowhere mentions gender identity, but it’s difficult not to read Jacob’s plight in that context, and particularly when he tells Wildcat that his body ‘is not the body it should be'. Indeed, George Mackay is superbly lupine when he drops to all fours and begins stalking the institution’s corridors in the dark of night, to the extent that the high-concept theme of species identity disorder begins to make perfect sense.
Reminiscent at times of and , and distressing in the way Jacob is subjected to conversion therapy designed to reconfigure who he truly is, is a powerful fable about intolerance and self-acceptance.
(cinema release)
