Antoinette in the Cevennes * * * *

This was in the recent French Film Festival where it was called My Lover My Donkey and I.  Now it is on main release.

I don't know why they've renamed it. But I do recall that I wasn't particularly attracted to it at the Festival, either by name or by trailer.

And how did that make you feel?

But the reviews are very good, so I had a look at it today and I have to say I was impressed. It's a gentle comedy featuring a lead that could easily give you the shits. But she walks the fine line with such élan you can't help but like her and wish her - and her donkey - well.

Antoinette is a primary school teacher having an affair with the married father of one of her students.  During the summer holidays he does a trek in the Cevennes with his family.  So Antoinette books a trek too in the same area,  telling herself that she is simply taking a holiday and that she is not actually stalking him.  She is a girl confused by love and obsession.  During the walk she reads Robert Louis Stevenson's journal, written when he did the trek.

To help carry her load she hires a donkey and what she learns is that the only way the donkey will cooperate is if she constantly talks to him. So in a way the donkey becomes her counsellor.  That a donkey could become a better psychoanalyst than most should not surprise too many people.