European Films

The ambitious project comes with three big selling points: Les animaux amoureux was shot over 500 days on five continents with essentially the same small crew (unlike, for example, Earth, with over a dozen credited crews), has a voice-over by Cécile de France in the original French version and has a musical score composed by Philip Glass, his first work specifically created for a documentary since his score for Erol Morriss's The Fog of War.

But despite the wealth of footage -- or perhaps because of it -- the film feels like an 82-minute trailer for a documentary feature rather than the feature itself. Its succession of animals preparing their nests, battling each other for sexual access, couples copulating, mothers being pregnant and fathers feeding their offspring feels like a museum movie that one can walk in and out of at any point, since scenes are not strongly related to one another beyond the obvious parenthood theme. The editing by Axelle Malavieille and Jacqueline Lecompte does nothing to find some common ground between the shots, often cutting between different species on different continents and during different seasons as if they lived around the corner from one another on the same day.

De France’s voice-over offers no linking material between the images either; it only opens and closes the film with some quasi-poetic remarks that border on the romantic ("the molecules of love are the same in man and beast," she says at one point) and views love as something that propels all species, something that Disney-lovers will recognise but which will probably make ecologists cringe. A scene showing the first steps of a baby deer is a direct nod to Disney’s animated Bambi, while the following sequences suggest it might be time for a Bambi remake with either elephants or orang-utans since they are just as cute as babies and have difficulties getting into motion too.

Glass’s music occasionally accompanies the succession of pretty images, though because of their heterogeneous nature his score likewise runs the gamut from comic-operatic to more recognisably Glassian themes. It never becomes particularly memorable, however, and soundtrack sales for Les animaux amoureux will unlikely go through the roof.

As could be expected from a director who cut his teeth in filmmaking as a cinematographer, the images are often very beautiful (though some artificial lighting was used, creating sometimes confusing double shadows). Filming in widescreen, often in extreme close-up and with a short depth of field, Charbonnier reminds us how ugly pink flamingos are from up close and thankfully showers the same kind of attention on exotic animals in far-flung locales as he does on some of the native species in Europe such as the Mallard duck.

But despite the crisp images (which are accompanied by a faultless sound design), they never reach the wow-factor of Earth or Winged Migration, making Les animaux amoureux not nearly as exciting as its counterparts.

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