An experienced documentarian, French filmmaker Luc Jacquet shot to international fame with the Oscar -winning The Emperor’s Journey (aka March of the Penguins). For his next film, Jacquet turned his hand to making a work that also contains lots of amazing shots of wildlife and natural landscapes but is far removed from his previous work in other ways.
Although it too has been described as a nature documentary, The Fox and the Child comes across as too fairy-tale-ish and fictional for me. Additionally, although the word ‘fox’ precedes that of ‘child’ in its title, the film privileges the child’s point of view far more than the canid.
Narrated by Isabelle Carre, the movie tells the story of Lila (Bertille Noel-Bruneau), a freckle-faced girl who lives out in the country and is allowed by her parents to regularly roam alone in much of it. On her way home from school one autumn day, the 10-year-old redhead spies a red-furred fox. Thinking “He is so beautiful,” she attempts to track it down, calling it “my fox” even though it is clearly wild and not particularly amenable to being domesticated.
Even after finding out in the spring that the fox is actually a fellow female (and a mother to boot), Lila’s determination to get close to the animal doesn’t waver. Eventually, her bid to befriend the fox pays off with her not only being led to new and wonderful places by the animal but also earning its trust.
Just when The Fox and the Child appears to have become far too romanticized and sickly sweet for its own good though, Jacquet throws in some didactic messages including it not being in the natural order of things for a fox and a human to be pals who understand each other. All in all, I must admit to feeling that this would have been a better film if Jacquet had focused his attention solely on the fox. As things stand, the best scenes in the movie for me are those that featured the fox in its natural habitat sans human child.

Yvonne Teh