My Donkey, My Lover & I

My Donkey, My Lover & I starts with a sweeping romantic gesture: Our heroine, Antoinette (Calamy), conducts her classroom of kids to sing a song of temptation and longing for the school’s talent show, of sorts, for the parents. In the audience, her lover, Vladimir (Lavernhe), watches, barely able to hide his smirk, looking forward to the moments after the performance when he and Antoinette can be alone. It’s a relationship of passion, and Antoinette is smitten, giggling and joking in their time alone, clearly enamored with her student’s father.

Their moment of passion quickly evaporates when Vladimir informs Antoinette that he can no longer go on their upcoming rendezvous as planned, because his wife has booked a donkey for a hike with the family. Antoinette refuses to be cast aside as the other woman, however. She treks after her lover to Cévennes National Park to surprise him on his holiday. There’s only one snafu, a snag in her plan that she didn’t quite think through before her enormous leap of faith – she’s never hiked before, and certainly never with a donkey by her side.

Director and writer Caroline Vignal’s film begins with a cliche, but slowly peels away the layers, offering up a romantic comedy that’s less about the power of love and more about the journey of discovering happiness in solitude. There are no big teary moments, no monologues begging to be the chosen one. My Donkey, My Lover & I is the antithesis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1879 book, Travels With a Donkey in the Cévennes, that inspired Vignal’s film. As noted in the film, Stevenson’s famous hike through the Cévennes ended with him chasing after the love of his life, a married woman from the United States whom he met while she was abroad in France. Antoinette is not a chaser, though, and is not interested in running after a man who cannot make up his mind.

My Donkey, My Lover & I is sweet without being sickeningly so, a charming adventure that doesn’t aim to be anything more than a lovely romp. Calamy’s chemistry with her donkey, Patrick, is remarkably never cloying, an endearing human-animal relationship that feels natural on screen. A large part of why Vignal’s screenplay works is Calamy’s delightful nature, a heroine that’s hard not to root for because of her big heart. Her reckless behavior is softened by her blind optimism, making Antoinette an easy protagonist to fall in love with. My Donkey, My Lover & I isn’t going to break the mold, but it’s an easy stride of a film that’s bubbling with joy.