Mark Reviews Movies: MY DONKEY, MY LOVER & I

My Donkey, My Lover & I, Greenwich Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 21, 2022

Despite a strong central performance and some beautiful backdrops supporting an amusing conceit, there's simply not much more than predictable formula in My Donkey, My Lover & I. The premise is the stuff of an old screwball comedy or an even older comedy of errors, in which a woman keeps messing up in a misguided effort to make an even bigger mistake: to intrude on her married lover's family vacation.

That woman is named Antoinette, a grade school teacher, and she's played by Laure Calamy in a performance that's far trickier than it might seem. Antoinette has been having an affair with Vladimir (Benjamin Lavernhe), the father of one of her students, and with summer break arriving, she believed the two of them would be taking a trip. Instead, Vladimir informs her that his wife already has made plans for the couple and their daughter.

It's a week-long hiking trip in the mountainous Cévennes region. Almost immediately, Antoinette books the same trip, hoping to meet up with Vladimir and, from there, the details of her plan are unknown even to her. Also, she has rented a donkey, unlike the rest of the group—not including Vladimir, which is an ill omen—at the starting point of her hike, and hasn't accounted for how stubborn the animal will be.

Writer/director Caroline Vignal smartly throws us right into the setup, so there's very little time to consider how terrible the plan is (which is the joke, after all), how desperate this makes Antoinette look, and how the whole of our main character's existence has intrinsically been defined by her relationship with a man. Calamy's work here, then, is vital, not only in selling the humor and sincerity of so many scenes that have her dealing with and baring her heart to the donkey, but also in simply being so disarmingly charming that those concerns about and shortcomings of the character don't matter as much as they otherwise might have.

The movie works well enough when it is just about Antoinette, alone with her thoughts about her bad taste in men and learning to be a bit more self-sufficient in her troubles and growing bond with the pack animal. When Valdimir—along with the wife (played by Olivia Côte) and daughter (played by Louise Vidal), lest we forget—re-enters the picture, the ensuing complications aren't nearly as thorny (The wife seems to know) or funny (A revelation leads to an elaborate pratfall) as Vignal seems to believe them to be.

Vignal's screenplay rushes through that core conflict, leaving us, thankfully, with more potential for Antoinette's evolution. Unfortunately, My Donkey, My Lover & I doesn't take advantage of that opportunity, and just as her character is predicated on one romantic relationship at the start, Antoinette's apparent change is ultimately defined by the possibility of another one.

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