Released in 2019, “Le Chant du Loup” impressed its audience with its 5-star cast. However, with its plot taking place aboard a submarine, the film does not yet have any female characters inside this device. And for good reason according to the director
The song of the wolf : USS Alabama French-style
Submarine films are very rare in France. And this, unlike the United States where there are some classics such asU-571, Hunting for Red October or even USS Alabama. Released in 2019, The song of the wolf was therefore a small event. The first film by Antonin Baudry, the film follows the story of a “Golden Ear”, jargon that designates acoustic analysts in submarines. However, the latter committed an analytical error which endangered an entire crew. Seeking to regain the confidence of his comrades, he finds himself caught up in a global conflict that is beyond him.
Success in theaters (1.5 million admissions), The song of the wolf can also boast for having obtained 3 nominations for the Césars, including a reward. Not bad for a novice director, previously known for writing the comic book script Quai d’Orsay (he was also writing his film adaptation).
Where are the women ?
François Civil, Omar Sy, Reda Kateb, Mathieu Kassovitz… On paper, The song of the wolf has a magnificent cast. The latter, however, remains exclusively male, because no female character is on board the submarine in the film. A choice that Antonin Baudry accepts perfectly because he wanted to stick as close as possible to reality. Indeed, as he states in the Huffpost, women are totally absent from this type of device:
When I watched all these people, when I dived, I saw a world of men. (…) There were no women on board the submarines I boarded. And there are still none in nuclear attack submarines.
You should know that, until 2014, women were not allowed to join the crew of a submarine. It was Jean-Yves Le Drian, Minister of Defense at the time, who announced that year the assignment of several female officers aboard a nuclear submarine. However, it was “on an experimental basis” at first. While the sector has tended to become more feminized in recent years, the rate of women in the surface fleet is still very low compared to that of men.
Hence Antonin Baudry’s choice to put only male characters on board the submarine in The song of the wolf :
Obviously, I asked myself the question of introducing a female character. (…) But I believe a lot in sincerity and authenticity in a film. I observed a world of men, so I wanted to describe a world of men. Changing that would have been taking a break, and that’s not what I wanted to do. I stayed true to the universe in which I had immersed myself.
