Antoinette dance les Cevennes (2020)

Directed by: Caroline Vignal | 97 minutes | adventure, comedy | Actors: Laure Calamy, Benjamin Lavernhe, Olivia Côte, Marc Fraize, Jean-Pierre Martins, Louise Vidal, Lucia Sanchez, Maxence Tual, Marie Rivière, François Caron, Ludivine de Chastenet, Bertrand Combe, Pierre Laur, Denis Mpunga, Dorothée Tavernier

What do you do as a Parisienne when your married lover has to miss out on a promised week together because his wife and her family want to go hiking in the mountains of the Massif Central for a week? Then you also book a holiday there, hoping to meet him along the way. Oh yes, Antoinette is once the teacher of her lover’s daughter. Because that’s how they know each other. Antoinette books her walking holiday with a donkey and is assigned the surly Patrick, who hardly wants to walk with her, but gradually becomes confided in her.

All this can really only happen in France, where, according to the light-hearted tone of ‘Antoinette dans les Cévennes’, few moral dilemmas are associated with Antoinette’s behaviour. Or real consequences.

The leading role of Antoinette is for Laure Calemy, who walks around the world slightly hysterically and with big dazed eyes. She is physically clumsy and can’t handle animals at all. Not even with men, by the way, which is apparent from the stories she tells Patrick about her previous flirts, short-lived relationships and casual affairs.

She has a fierce whim for her new lover Vladimir (Benjamin Lavernhe). She swoons like a teenage girl, but whether she really has deeper feelings for him remains unclear for a long time. And if not, why on earth is she traveling after him?
The donkey Patrick seems to understand Antoinette better than anyone with his head movements, strategic beams and indifferent looks.

Director Caroline Vignal also wrote the story and based it partly on a walking tour she took in the Cevennes with her young daughter ten years ago (there was no lover involved at the time). During the film there are frequent references to the famous writer Robert Louis Stevenson, known for ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’. Stevenson wrote another book, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, in 1879, one of the first true travel books, an account of his walking tour with a donkey to forget his heartbreak over his lover married to another. It still attracts tourists to this day, who follow its route – with or without a donkey.

‘Antoinette dans les Cévennes’ is superficial, with bland, farcical humor and consists of quite a large collection of clichés. Fortunately, the film is beautiful to watch. The landscapes are an enchanting beauty, the weather is brilliant and Antoinette walks around in an advertising brochure of the regional tourist office. Calmay knows how to play Antoinette so spontaneously that it becomes almost believable and keeps the irritation to a minimum.

But if you’ve seen the film, you’ll think: why? What was the message and the added value of this? Why hasn’t director Vignal made a film for twenty years and then comes up with this? But then you think again that Patrick the donkey (who was played by three different donkeys according to the credits) has quite funny moments, the film looks nice and it can’t hurt at all. ‘Antoinette dans les Cévennes is light-hearted entertainment in sun-drenched mountain landscapes for 90 minutes. Better than looking outside when it’s raining.