As I don't believe I've previously mentioned on this blog (including my Zootopia review), foxes are among my favorite animals. This has sometimes led me to take bigger risks than usual in my entertainment, even with movies that don't really involve foxes, such as After the Fox. This one does feature real red foxes prominently, so I decided to ignore the 50% on Rotten Tomatoes and consider the 7.0 on IMDb promising enough.
The protagonist is a preteen girl, identified in English as Judie, living near the woods in France, her story narrated by her adult self. Upon spotting a vixen, she obsesses over the chance to get gradually closer. Over the course of months, the vixen allows a lot of familiarity for a wild animal, even apparently welcoming the girl. But Judie goes too far in wanting a pet.
From the Netflix description, I expected something like Duma. Instead, the vixen spends very little time in anything like captivity and rarely needs any human support. Furthermore, we barely hear from any humans other than Judie, which may explain why no name is listed for her in most sources. (Her parents call for her at one point, but from afar, it's hard to make out.) There's a greater presence of foxes, whether or not you count the ten who play the main vixen.
In case foxes aren't your thing, there are other critters on display: badgers, a hare, a hawk, hedgehogs, a lynx, wolves...yeah, some of them lead to intense moments. If any animals got hurt in the making of this film, mice did. Hey, foxes gotta eat. With a G rating, there's not much onscreen violence, but little kids may learn more than desired about the tragic reality of death.
You could say that Nature herself is the third major character. Judie doesn't commune only with the vixen; there's a lot of beautiful scenery to take in. I half-envied her opportunity to live like this in childhood, with little adult intervention to boot. Of course, there are dangers to her, and animals are ultimately no substitute for human camaraderie. At the risk of spoiling, the ending message reminds me a tad of the similarly titled The Fox and the Hound.
Herein lies an important lesson for kids, and many grown-ups could use the reminder. Foxes may resemble both dogs and cats, but I've done enough research to know that they make hard-mode pets. TFatC doesn't get into the nastier aspects, like odor and biting, but it doesn't have to.
I could believe this as a true story, tho it makes no such claim. None of the animal behavior is a radical departure from what I know, and IMDb lists only a continuity error. The tradeoff is a super-simple plot. Older viewers should watch not for mental stimulation but for an adorable, beautiful picture that's both heartwarming and heartbreaking. That's good enough for me.
ADDENDUM: This U.S. DVD does not offer French audio or even French subtitles. The actress of young Judie has been convincingly dubbed, and the narrator is Kate Winslet. Without the credits, I'd have thought the setting to be England.
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