In her 2019 New York Times piece “Racists Are Recruiting. Watch Your White Sons,” writer and media critic Joanna Schroeder raises the alarm regarding deluges of xenophobic nationalist content flooding online spaces courtesy of white supremacists intent on recruiting young men—including her two sons—to their cause. “These groups prey upon the natural awkwardness of adolescence.” she correctly points out, because at no point in a man’s life is he more vulnerable to scapegoating’s seductive allure than when he’s trying to figure himself out and cope with his changing body. If Schroeder ever sits down to watch Teddy, the sophomore film by brothers Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma, she’ll probably feel like she’s been proven right.
She may also feel relief that at least the title character is just a werewolf and not a domestic terrorist. Under the right (or wrong) influence, he might’ve gone and joined a hate group like Génération Identitaire. By comparison, lycanthropy seems preferable. Of course, Teddy isn’t so full of itself that it actively pursues subtext at the expense of text. The Boukhermas have not made a straightforward “radicalization, but make it a literal monster” movie. What they’ve done instead is made a movie about a loner living in an unnamed hamlet in the Pyrenees, desperate to feel belonging whether within his peer group, his hometown or, most ambitious of all, history, who ends up suffering a nibble from a rampaging supernatural canid. It’s a werewolf movie directed in the vein of stilted, bone-dry coming-of-age comedy. But if the viewer is so inclined, they might walk away from Teddy connecting the dots between the same-named protagonist, played by Anthony Bajon, and scores of teens and 20-somethings like him who turn to violence as the ultimate expression of not only ideologies, but angst.
Passing the days alienated from your community is a bummer way of life, especially when the way’s chosen for you by the apathetic pricks in charge of your town and the haughty adolescent douchebags who consider you less-than by virtue of your education and background. Teddy doesn’t go to high school. He hasn’t even finished middle school, if we take him at his word during a post-screw conversation with his girlfriend, Rebecca (Christine Gautier). He doesn’t have a mom or dad, either. Just an adoptive uncle, Pépin (Ludovic Torrent). There’s not much Teddy has to offer, at least at a glance.
The Boukhermas give far deeper inspection than that. Teddy’s actually a pretty good lad, education or no, a little rough around the edges and not one to follow rules with a smile or dance to the beat of someone else’s drum, but still good overall. His relationship with Rebecca is the best proof of his character. Then one night, Teddy does what people can’t help doing in horror movies: He wanders into the brush to inspect a noise at dusk, and a wolf—or something else—bites him for his trouble. For the next 70 minutes, all he can do is try not to kill anyone, even if everyone gives him a reason.