Psycho's Movie Reviews #333: The Fox And The Child (2007)

The Fox and the Child is a 2007 French family drama film directed by Luc Jacquet. Starring Bertille Noël-Bruneau, Isabelle Carré and Thomas Laliberté. The English version of the film is narrated by Kate Winslet. It tells the story of a young girl who explores through a forest looking for a fox.

Plot

A young girl who's about 10 years old lives in a farm house in the Jura mountains in eastern France. One day in autumn, when she rides her bicycle to school through the forest, she observes a fox hunting. Of course, the fox escapes, but the girl yearns to meet the animal again.

During the following months, the girl spends most of her free time in the forest trying to find the fox, but she doesn't meet it again until winter arrives. During the winter, she follows the fox's tracks far across the fields. Suddenly she compares her hand to the size of the tracks near those she is following and discovers they are relatively fresh wolf tracks. She is alarmed as a wolf pack begins howling near her. She runs away panicked, falls and hurts her ankle.

The ankle heals very slowly, so that she has to stay at home during the winter reading a book about foxes and other animals of the forest.

When spring arrives, the girl is looking for foxholes and waits for the fox, who she eventually names Lily. The fox has young babies and moves from one foxhole to another because of the girl's inquisitiveness; so the girl decides to observe the fox from a greater distance.

The girl finds the fox again and tries to get the animal accustomed to her. She feeds it meat. Later she can even touch the fox and is led to the new den. Finally, the fox comes to her house and she lets it inside, wanting to show it her bedroom. But the fox becomes distressed at not being able to find a way out and escapes by smashing through the brittle plate glass window, shattering the glass. The fox is hurt badly but survives. The girl learns that she cannot keep wild animals as pets at home as they are unpredictable and are not possessions.

Years later she tells the whole story to her son, as seen at the end of the film. Some versions (DVD English) replace this scene with an illustration.

Production

The film was shot on the Plateau de Retord in Ain, which the film director knows well because he spent his youth there, in the summer, as well as in the Abruzzo in Italy. The foxes in the film were played by six animals: Titus, Sally, Ziza, Scott, Tango and Pitchou. Titus was the fox who had been tamed by Marie-Noëlle Baroni. It died on March 17, 2008 at the advanced age of 12 years.

Pathe distributed the movie in the United Kingdom while New Line Cinema released the film in the United States through their Picturehouse label.

Box office $29,610,210

My Review

From the filmmakers who brought us The March of the Penguins, I guess that came with plenty of expectations for The Fox and the Child. From the harsh winters of the South Pole to the lush wilderness in France, the narrative now becomes part documentary and part fairy tale, which tells of the friendship between the two titular characters, Renard the fox and its friendship with the child who christened it, played by Bertille Noel-Beuneau.

The story's frankly quite simple, and at times this movie would have looked like the many Japanese movies which children-miscellaneous animals striking a friendship after the development of trust, and how they go about hanging around each other, dealing with respective adversaries and the likes. Here, the child meets the elegant fox near her home up in the mountains, which provide for plenty of beautiful picture-postcard perfect shots that a cinematographer will have to go into overdrive to capture.

But while we indulge in wistful scenery, the characters don't get to establish that level of trust from the onset, and we have to wait a few seasons to past, and 45 minutes into the film, before they find a leveller in food. The child persistently attempts at striking a bond with the objective of taming the creature for her own amusement, but the fox, well, as other notions of course. While I thought the narrative was pretty weak, unlike March of the Penguins which has that human narrative interpretation of what's happening on screen, what excelled here were the documentary elements of the movie, tracing the life and times of the fox as both a predator, and a prey.

Between the two, more tension and drama was given to the latter, especially when dealing with traditional foes like wolves, and granted, those sequences were fairly intense especially when the child got embroiled in it. Otherwise, it was plain sailing and quite a bore as the two of them go about their playing with each other, in shots that you know have undergone some movie magic editing. There were surprisingly dark moments in the movie that weren't really quite suitable for children, as those in the same hall attested to it by bawling their eyes out suddenly, so parents, you might want to take note and not let your toddler disturb the rest of the movie goers.

As a film, I would've preferred this to be a complete documentary ala The March of the Penguins, but I guess the way it was resented, probably had the objective of warning us not to meddle with nature, and that some things are just not meant to be, and should stay as such. Decent movie that leaned on the strength of the chemistry between Bertille Noel- Bruneau, and the multiple foxes that played Renard.

This movie gave me a magnificent end for winter vacations... A real visual poem, and a simple, fascinating story with a so meaningful message that left me with happy, copious tears: the friendship between a little girl and a fox from the forest. A beautiful, timeless fable concerning the value of friendship, love... and the risk of confusing these feelings with the selfish possession of friends or loved ones, because, as the narrator says: "I understood that I wouldn't retain it if I bound it to me". It's just great: the story, the photography, the music, the characters... I remembered so many moments of my childhood through the little girl that opened her innocent eyes to wilderness and its fascinating world, and I wept happily for those times I tried to retain somebody to me, and finally I had to let him/her go. It makes you smile, weep, think, and grow. A 20/10 to French cinema for this sweet masterwork.

See it, admire it, make it yours... It will become one of your favourites.

{I just LOVE the Fox, it's so cute I wanna ruffle it's fur and cuddle it furever!!!!}