Vicky and Her Mystery

A father moves with his eight-year-old daughter into an old house in the Cantal mountains. The girl has not spoken since the loss she suffered. A shepherd they meet on the mountain gives her a puppy. As the months pass it becomes clear the animal is not a dog but a wolf. By then the girl has started speaking again, and now they are going to take the animal away. The subject is not love of animals but recovery being paid for by someone else. The wolf heals the girl, but it threatens the flocks and is a real danger to the people of the village. The film does not ignore the farmers being right, and that keeps it from being a simple children's story. The form leans on landscape. The high pastures, fog and winter of the Cantal carry much of the film; the camera does not chase the animal's movement but watches from a distance. The director, Denis Imbert, works with narratives set outdoors; a few years later he made another film built on walking, with Jean Dujardin. The wolf scenes here were shot with trained animals and long preparation. Vincent Elbaz plays the father, Shanna Keil the daughter and Marie Gillain the vet. Who it is for: viewers who like family films and stories set in nature. Who it is not for: anyone bothered by frequent emotional prompting; the film does it noticeably towards the end.