English Title: My Donkey, My Lover & I
Director: Caroline Vignal
2022
Screwball Romantic Comedy
Running Time 1hr 36mins
Cert: 15
French with English Subtitles
“A warm comedy of unparalleled Frenchness about infidelity and animal magnetism”
A Parisienne primary school teacher Antoinette accidentally-on-purpose goes on the same donkey-trekking holiday as her lover’s family. Antoinette is meant to be spending the first week of summer holidays alone with lover, and the father of one of her pupils, Vladimir, while his family are at the beach. Instead, when Vladimir’s wife surprises him with a family hiking holiday, Antoinette impulsively books herself a place, too: six days of 20km hiking, staying in hostels. She arrives in teeny denim hot pants and huge wedge sandals – there’s as much Bridget Jones in her DNA as Julia Roberts. But Vladimir is nowhere to be seen, and, predictably, it’s not love at first sight with her stubborn donkey Patrick either.
As Antoinette bonds with her donkey the movie evolves from gentle farce to journey of emotional growth. “You might call it Eat Bray, Love – except it’s European, so – there’s less pseudo-spiritual self-discovery and more drunken snogging”, according to The Guardian.
The showdown with Vladimir and his wife, when it finally comes, is a lesson in the famous French casualness about infidelity. But Antoinette’s affair slips into insignificance quite quickly; the real chemistry here is with the four-legged ass, not the human one.
