Jerzy Skolimowski is the celebrated veteran director who first came to Cannes in 1972 with King, Queen, Knave starring Gina Lollobrigida and David Niven; now he has returned with a winter’s tale of a film, inspired by Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar from 1966. I’m not sure this is my favourite Skolimowski film, but it is engaging in many ways: beautifully photographed, sentimental and surreal in equal measure; and also stubborn – as stubborn as its hero – in its symbolism and stark pessimism.
Like Bresson, Skolimowski makes his lead a donkey, the beast that carried the Virgin Mary to Bethlehem and Jesus into Jerusalem. Skolimowski calls his animal “EO” – after its braying “eee-ohhh” sound. The place is present-day Poland, but the setting could almost be Europe at any time in the last few centuries. EO is being worked in a circus act but has to be let go because of legislation about using animals in this way. He winds up in a donkey sanctuary from which he is freed, then captured in the streets by a council worker for whose football team EO becomes a mascot. But then he is beaten by hooligans supporting the opposing team, captured by a gang trading in illicit horse- and donkey-meat, and finally rescued by a troubled young aristocrat whose haughty and devout mama (a tasty cameo for Isabelle Huppert) disapproves of her son’s louche gambling ways.
