Yesterday Katie and I had a few hours to kill in Glasgow before going to Zoe and Christine's show - we have already bought all the school uniform and associated items and have been in every city centre museum so I decided we would go to the pictures.
This has been a wet holiday so we have been to the pictures a lot and have more or less exhausted the kids movies - all that was left was The Fox and the Girl - a movie described in all reviews as sugary and twee, given a grudging 2/5.
I expected to doze off while Katie watched a sub Beatrix Potter tale.
However I was wrong; I was captivated, truly captivated.
The reason that I am being bossy in the title to this post is that this film is being marketed as a children's movie and it most certainly isn't. It has a girl as the only character (bar the fox) and has a U rating but those are the only childy things about it.
The director Luc Jaquet (March of the Penguins) has looked back to a childhood meeting with a fox and has used all the wonderful techniques of nature photography to create a fantasy of "what if". The spectacular landscape of South East France is blended with that in Italy's Abruzzes National Park; wildlife photography shot over 6 months is blended with that of trained foxes, the child's sense of wonder and adventure is created by repopulating the land with wolves, bears and lynx. Above all, for me, the colours of russetty autumn leaves, thawing grass, and mist dissolving from a valley are spectacularly shot - speeded up, slowed down, crystalised.
Yes, if you are there for a plot, it is lacking; there are only about 6 lines of dialogue and they are badly dubbed; Kate Winslet's voice over is a bit sentimental. BUT the chance to spend a rainy morning immersed in the colours of nature - as you can't see them in real life - absolutely wonderful.
It is such a pity that - by being marketed as a kids movie and to be honest probably as a little girl's movie - this film is going to miss out on a massive market of people who don't have little girls but who do love nature and spectacle and are prepared to just watch. And it sure as anything won't work on a small screen.
I am going to try and go back - just to watch the speeded up mist and the slowed down butterfly.
sounds enchanting Jane. Do you know if it is out in main stream cinemas or is it only in independents?
Posted by: ginny | August 16, 2008 at 03:18 PM
wow - this does look good... during the week I looked out of my industrial estate window that looks onto barbed wire and a tree where some magpies live...and there was a fox, really deep red brown and black just looking up at me - it felt quite magical..I thought immediately "renard"! how odd, maybe it was a sign to go see this!!
Posted by: caireen | August 16, 2008 at 06:16 PM
Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. I never would have bothered to go, but you bet I will now. Your review makes it sound delightful. Good job. Thank you!
Posted by: Barbee' | August 17, 2008 at 01:45 AM