Review of The Fox and the Child (2007) by Delney C — 30 Jul 2008

There's an undeniable fascination here about the extent of Jacquet's construction - when a wild cat chases a fox across a film set, how does a director get it to stop? (And what is the feline for "cut", anyway?) - but also a continuation of the Disneyfication of nature seen in "March of the Penguins".

It's the anti-"Grizzly Man": the fox never knocks over anybody's bins, and at no point in her frolicking through the glades does the girl step in droppings, or require the urgent application of a dock leaf.

Parents of hyperactive youngsters may also be alarmed by the film's suggestion that creatures who jump through second-storey windows will survive the impact. There are also problems of translation: it's positively unnatural, in this day and age, to be watching a dubbed version of a film, where the words heard don't match the lip movements seen, and Kate Winslet's English-language voiceover tends towards the gushy tones of boyband fan-prose ("My heart was beating so fast! He was so cute!!").

.. Sure, it's cute, with a scene-stealing cameo from a family of hedgehogs, and its sylvan beauty may yet send young cinemagoers scurrying into the woods for adventures of their own - but you sense this generation deserves better from their natural history: the wit of a Johnny Morris, say, if not the knowledge of Attenborough.