MY DONKEY MY LOVER & I (2020, dir. Caroline Vignal, France) and MY OLD SCHOOL (2022, dir. Jono McLeod, Scotland) by Patrick McElroy
While the summer season is coming to an end, it’s often known as a time of big loud blockbusters, but it’s also a time of sleepers that surprise you, and you share with friends. Since I normally write about one movie, I’ve decided to write about two that I recently saw, and would love to turn people on to.
The first one is a delightful French comedy titled My Donkey, My Lover & I, which was selected for the Cannes film festival in 2020, but the show was cancelled, and it finally got it’s US release last month. The film focuses on a middle-aged schoolteacher, who’s in love with a married man who has a daughter, and wants to spend more time with him, so she decides to interrupt his vacation. In doing so she takes part in a journey inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels With a Donkey in the Cevennes, where she gets a donkey, and has to walk with it across the country.
Not realizing at first the agony that comes in dealing with such an animal, she at first almost gives up, then after getting help the movie becomes a sweet relationship between human and animal. This is a film that has a relaxed feeling to it, where you feel as if you’re spending time with these people on vacation.
The other movie that I’d like to shed light on is a documentary titled My Old School, where going in I knew few of the details of the life events that were depicted, so I won’t share too much with you, but will tell of the style instead. The documentary tells the story of a student at a school in a small town in Scotland in the mid 1990’s and the unexpected events that happened. The real person the film is based on refused to reveal himself, so actor Alan Cumming lip-syncs over what he says, but it features interviews with the other classmates, and faculty of the school.
The movie also does something interesting where the flashbacks in the movie are all hand drawn animation that gives it the look of the 90s. The film is very funny, but at the same time rather heartbreaking, exploring the disappointments in life.
While these films might not be in theaters for much longer, they’re great ones to seek out, whether on streaming or on demand. I wrote about these films because I find that movie theaters shouldn’t just belong to massive films, the way the rich shouldn’t be the only ones who own homes.
Patrick McElroy is a movie writer and movie lover based in Los Angeles. Check out his other writing at: https://www.facebook.com/patrick.mcelroy.3726 or his IG: @mcelroy.patrick