Pepe (2024)

If you’ve ever been to Karnak or Luxor and wandered through the temples, you can easily imagine the sound of the ancient Egyptian deities philosophising in husky tones about mortality as they adopt their animalistic manifestations. One would be a hippo, and though he’s unlikely to have been called “Pepe”, his would be a discourse on this beast’s association with humanity, with his fellow creatures and - somewhat inexplicably, his journey to Colombia where he is now facing army sharpshooters who want to stop him terrorising the locals in the river. The theistic contrast works quite well here because the film itself is an hybrid of drama and natural history film. Set both in Colombia where hippos are not native, and in Namibia where they are more plentiful, we follow two parallel storylines that showcase the beauty and violence of these three ton creatures in their native environments as well as some human melodramatics that, especially in South America, raise a laugh and a grimace in equal measure. We start and conclude in Colombia. The local fishermen are continually complaining to the river inspector about a great monster in their midst, but their stories are so wild and inconsistent that he just think’s they’ve overdone it on the tequila. So, it has to be said, does the wife of the principal complainant. All the while, the film is interspersed with more celestially poetic commentary, in native African languages, from the viewpoint of an hippo who knows that he is not at home, nor where he is supposed to be, nor destined to stay alive for long. Does he wish to lament his fate or embrace it? No, it doesn’t make much sense in any traditional way, but it is oddly compelling for the first hour as we see animals that neither want nor require man’s intervention in their lives or in their habitats. “Pepe” is no threat to anyone so long as he is left in peace, and though we rarely actually see him swimming in the Magdalene river, we can sense a certain benign spirituality from him that is really quite powerful. For some reason, though, we divert from matters hippo to matters human, and though the spatting couple arguing about who saw what is fun, the rest of the people parts are more of a distraction than an asset. There’s one especially long beauty contest where the girls are asked what they would change to improve their territory and what is their dream, but none of them mention "Pepe” or, for that matter, world peace! It’s a bit long and at times is a little too listless, but - and I can’t really explain why - I did find myself drawn into the world of this giant artiodactyl and despite the film's confusing start (beware if you are photo-sensitive), I did quite appreciate it.